A Definitive Guide to Bitters

Welcome to 2025, everyone! Let’s give the year a bitter start – that’s better than a bitter end, right? If you don’t think so yet, listen to this episode and by the end, we’re sure you’ll agree!

Bitters are a truly indispensable piece of an herbal toolkit. They – like demulcents, adaptogens, and alteratives – can achieve things in the body which pharmaceuticals, acupuncture, and other healing modalities simply cannot replicate. Bitters are one of the herbalist’s superpowers!

In this episode, we cover:

• bitter as signal – and why their actions on the body are nearly immediate
• bitter deficiency syndrome – a uniquely modern human problem
• energetics of bitters – is bitter always cooling, or is it more complicated than that?
• actions of bitter herbs – digestion-activating, fluid-draining, liver-awakening… mind-centering…
• bitter-tasting constituents – and an ode to the flexibility & variety of bitter taste receptors
• subcategories of bitter herbs: pure bitters, mild bitters, aromaic bitters, inulin/berberine/artemisinin-bearing bitters, fungal bitters, warming/relaxant/moistening bitters, …
• how to take bitters – drops, sips, chews, and more.

Since they’re so helpful – and really, not only for digestion – we address bitter herbs in many of our courses. Quite possibly all of them, now that we think about it! They’re that important. Bitters get a significant mention in:

• Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica
• Herbal Medicine-Making
• Holistic Nutrition & Digestive Health
• Basic Phytochemistry
• Neurological & Emotional Health

Like all our offerings, these are self-paced online video courses, which come with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

<silence>

Speaker 2: 0:14

Hi, I'm Kaia . And I'm Ryn . And we're here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts,

Speaker 3: 0:20

And on the internet everywhere. Thanks to the power of the podcast. Woo-hoo . In 2025, no less.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Yeah. No more . New, new year, new chair. Uh , old chair, actually. Old rocking chair. Very old rocking chair. But I'm just trying it out. We're gonna see <laugh> , you can

Speaker 3: 0:36

See. Yeah. It's 2025. And we have decided that we are ready for this, and it's gonna be

Speaker 2: 0:41

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 0:44

We, we decided, yes .

Speaker 2: 0:45

We decided, we decided we're ready. We say we're ready.

Speaker 3: 0:48

It's gonna be great. This is gonna be a great year of podcasts for you, and we're gonna kick it off right now , uh, with today's topic. Bitter herbs.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Yeah. Bitter herbs. Uh, today's topic , uh, or to , or what , you know, what we wrote as our title here was a Definitive Guide to Bitters. And I mean, you , as soon as you say that something is definitive, I guess that's

Speaker 3: 1:11

Can we, can we just differentiate definitive from exhaustive? Because we don't, we're not going to do the letter .

Speaker 2: 1:18

That's nice. Yeah . That's like , well, I mean, yeah. Like, I just, fair warning , dear listener. Uh, this episode might be longer than usual, because while it's not exhaustive, I think it is pretty definitive. <laugh> , I think it's fairly definitive.

Speaker 3: 1:34

We, we will define bitters <laugh> , Uh, and we will, we will not give them a, a, you know , uh, small definition. We'll, give them a big one. It's gonna be good. Because look, bitters are really important. They're a , they're a , a critical part of your work as an herbalist. And, and that's, you know, they're one of those things like, like demulcent herbs, like adaptogens, like alternatives that you don't get anywhere else. You don't get them from drugs, you don't get them from the pharmaceutical world. You don't exactly get those kinds of impacts from acupuncture or, I don't know, reiki or , or whatever else. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Like other modalities don't have that to offer. These are things that plants can give us. Yeah. And so thanks plants as always,

Speaker 2: 2:17

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 2:18

Right. But those are, those are always worth looking for. Really. And I mean, if you're into lots of modalities, they're worth looking for in, in whatever ones you practice. Like, what can this do that other things

Speaker 2: 2:28

That other things can't do ?

Speaker 3: 2:29

Can't do, yeah. Or can't do as well, or can't do in this particular way, or, or , or something like that. So,

Speaker 2: 2:35

Yeah , I think , I think in general, that is an excellent model for thinking about health and care specifically, because if, if you just tie yourself to one modality and you're like, well, I am this and this is what I do, then you run the risk of missing out on tools that you could have had available to you. Um, and so if instead you're looking for, like, what, what can I get here that I can't get anywhere else? Then you , I , I guess I'm just getting at, there's always this setup about wanting to be natural about our healthcare and wanting to avoid chemicals as much as possible and all those things. And those are really important great things.

Speaker 3: 3:25

We want that <laugh>. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:26

We , we definitely want that. Yeah . But like, not so much that if something were to happen in your life that would really require something not natural, you know, a surgery or a pharmaceutical in order for you to survive , um, we want you to still feel like you're , you have that option, that tool available to you. Right.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Because the sword cuts both ways. Those modalities have things that they can do and accomplish that herbs can't <laugh>. Right? Yeah. As we always say, I don't have an herb for your sucking chest wound <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 3:59

Right . Like it's, I I would prefer Yeah. For that to be dealt with in a different manner. Yeah . Like in an emergency room. Yeah . But, but yeah, so I think that, that just allowing yourself the flexibility to like be in a place of natural approach as much as possible, and as much as possible at various times in your life, or even many times in your life might be 100% of the time. Um, but just so that you, you are still open to whatever tools it is that, that are gonna get you what you need. And then the flip of that, that , that the people in your life maybe who are very , um, conventionally medically oriented , um, can also hopefully like be open to like, oh, but yeah, this bitter action that's actually an important action in the body. And we don't have that anywhere. That's a tool that I should make available to me. Yeah. Yeah . Yeah .

Speaker 3: 5:01

And as a practitioner, it's, it's good to identify these things within your scope of practice just so that you can, you can know what you have to offer , uh, in a collaborative kind of an environment or an integrative, you know, kind of situation. Um, and yeah, it's kind of what you're , what you bring to that, to that table. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Uh, so that's our topic for today , bitter <laugh>. Um, but first, a quick reminder , uh, don't forget that we, we teach herbalism online, and not only through our podcast, but through a, a complete , uh, and full-fledged online learning platform. Yes . Ha . Doesn't that sound good? Yes.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Uh, the podcast is great to dip your toes into , uh, but if you really wanna learn herbalism, a podcast is not enough. Um, so what you're gonna need is a well organized , systematic course of instruction. Uh, and we've got that for you. We teach by video. We teach also all the videos by audio as well, so that you can watch it if that's what works for you, you can listen to it while you're moving your body, if that's what works for you. We have printable materials. We have ways that you can get your questions answered very quickly. You can type them in while you're watching or listening to a lesson and get your answer within a day. Uh , you can attend live q and a sessions twice a week, actually more than twice a week, <laugh> , um, <laugh> right now, four times a week. Um, and you can also join our student community. And this community is not on Facebook. It is a private student community, specifically dedicated to working through the course materials, keeping you motivated, keeping you engaged, making you not just feel like, but really know that, that there is an active community of support for you. And you are not just having to learn alone by yourself with other, like, without a bunch of people who like herbs around you. Um, so yeah, it's as, as 360 as possible. It is, it is. It's great. Y'all. It is what we're saying. So if you really wanna learn this stuff , uh, and you like the pod, and you're like, oh, they finally made another pod episode , um, then hey, join the school.

Speaker 3: 7:19

Follow the links in the show notes, or go ahead and pop over to online.com and wealth herbs.com . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's what, all right . Let's talk about bidders . And I want to , I wanna start out by talking about, oh,

Speaker 2: 7:31

Wait, do we need to do our reclaimer?

Speaker 3: 7:33

You're right. We should do that. <laugh>, I almost forgot. It's

Speaker 2: 7:37

Because it's been a little while. Thank you,

Speaker 3: 7:39

Thank you,

Speaker 2: 7:39

Thank you. Seriously, it's not a resolution, but it definitely is a goal to be more, more consistent in regular episode creation we're doing this year. We're

Speaker 3: 7:53

Doing it . We're doing it . We're starting now. It's happening already. <laugh> , right ? So <laugh> , so here's our reclaimer. We , we remind you that we are not doctors. We are herbalist and holistic health educators.

Speaker 2: 8:02

The idea is discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So these discussions are for educational purposes only.

Speaker 3: 8:13

We want to remind you that good health doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn't exist as an objective standard. It's influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So keep in mind that we're not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that you must adhere to.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Everyone's body is different. So the things that we're talking about may or may not apply directly to you, but we hope that they'll give you some good information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with. Further

Speaker 3: 8:42

Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. This doesn't mean you're alone on the journey, and it doesn't mean that you're to blame for your current state of health, but it does mean that the final decision, when you're considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that's always your choice to make mm-hmm

Speaker 2: 9:02

<affirmative>.

Speaker 3: 9:03

Yeah. It's, it holds up. We still believe it. <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 9:08

All right . Yeah. All right . Now bitters. Now bitters.

Speaker 3: 9:10

Yeah. And I wanted to start , um, by thinking about bitter as a signal, right? Because we , we keep using this phrase bitter, bitter, and we can talk about categories of herbs because of different qualities that they have. Like, we can do an episode on warming herbs, and we can do an episode on adaptogens, and we can do an episode on , uh, on, you know, relaxant , diaphoretic and <laugh> . And , and we can categorize them in different ways. But this is a flavor, it's a sensation. It's something that you detect, right ? And you detect that in your experience of the world, your sensorium, you know, I taste something bitter, but you're also detecting it as, as a chemical, right? Like your tongue is responding to the chemistry in the plant or in the tincture that you've made. And is , there's a whole set of reactions apart from your sensation of bitterness, right? Even if we went into your brain and plucked out the part of it that turns <laugh> signals from the sub , from the tongue into a sensation of a taste, right? There would still be reactions in the rest of your body. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . There would still be , uh, a lot of things <laugh> that happen throughout your system. And one really important thing about this is that they are a reaction to the flavor. They are a reaction to the, to the taste of the plant or the chemistry of the plant. And that reaction means that what happens in your body happens fast. It happens faster than the amount of time it would take for those chemicals to touch your tongue, but then like, be absorbed in whether like through the, like, under the tongue into the blood, or like down through your stomach and through the whole digestive process, and then out into the blood, and then move around and then reach some tissue <laugh> , and then act on it, right? Yeah. Which is often the model that we have of like, I ingest something and that it acts in my system, right? We expect all of that to have to take place. But bitter is a really clear example of how that's not always required. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . There can be a faster than circulation bound impact. It's kind of a , there there

Speaker 2: 11:12

Will be. Yeah . There , there , yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:13

Right. It's kind of a clumsy way to say it, but it's just to say that you taste it, and right away stuff starts to happen inside of your body. Mm-hmm <affirmative> .

Speaker 2: 11:19

I think that bitter also is a really , um, fun, like, deep dive in physiology. Um, so like you, and not just in physiology, but also , um, you know, how there are those images. I'm, I'm thinking about a kaleidoscope, but I think that's not what I really mean. I really mean like magic eye . No, I mean, like, you start off with a picture at a kind of fairly high level, and you drop down to like greater magnification, and you see that there's similarities between them, and you get to a greater amount of notification and you're like, wait, there's still similarities here between all the levels. Fractals that I think fractals. Yeah. I think that's what I'm thinking about. So, so what I mean here is that when you taste something bitter, we're gonna go with black coffee for , as an example, because that's probably something, a flavor that you're familiar with. And maybe you don't like black coffee, maybe you do, that's awesome, but maybe you don't, and you prefer like the Starbucks version with the cream and the sugar and like all this stuff, or like coffee, ice cream or , or whatever mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and so you taste bitter, and what happens is that you as a person with feelings and preferences wrinkle your nose and you're like, Ooh , that's bitter. And so you have like received the message of bitterness and made some immediate actions because of it. Ew . Ew . <laugh> . Yeah , exactly. Ew. Yeah . Um , but then the thing is that if you go down a level of microscopic , uh, enlargement, whatever , um, the same thing is happening on your tongue. There are like, you taste bitter on your tongue, but on your tongue. Bitter is recepted in specific receptors for the bitter chemical. So you as a human are tasting a flavor, but that flavor exists because of chemistry. And this is also like when we talk about bioflavonoids and the red and blue pigments, and that the, the red color of beets, or the blue color of blueberries does not represent something present in the plant that is good for you. It is the thing in the plant that is good for you. Okay? There's other things that are good for you too, but whatever. Um, and so that's going on here. The bitter flavor that you are tasting is also like a specific type of molecule that is being recepted on your tongue. But then we can like, magnify it even more, and maybe not magnify, but go down a little more. And the , the, then we realize that there's receptors in places that are not just your tongue. There's receptors all the way down the digestive tract and <laugh> also in your lungs. Like there's bitter flavor receptors, bitter molecule receptors in all kinds of places that you would not expect them. And now it's story time . Um, because the other day, Rinn was drinking some tea. This is like real life at home with Rin and Katya ready <laugh> the other day. The other day, Rin was drinking some tea and it like went down the wrong pipe and <laugh>, and he started choking or like coughing , um, and like making a big to-do about coughing, because he really swallowed some <laugh> . I'm like, babe, are you okay? And when he finally stopped coughing, he looks at me and he's like, I'm just testing out the bitter receptors in my lungs. <laugh> Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yep . Yep . But anyway, yeah, we've got bitter receptors in the lungs too, which is like, oh , fascinating. Yeah . Um , not, that's not because you're supposed to inhale your t

Speaker 3: 15:19

No, <laugh> ,

Speaker 2: 15:20

Just to be clear. <laugh> .

Speaker 3: 15:20

Yeah. Yeah. Receptors, receptors are often , uh, what's called promiscuous. They <laugh> , they react to, to many different types of compounds mm-hmm <affirmative> . And they have varying reactions based on who, who it is that , uh, that tangled with them today. <laugh>

Speaker 2: 15:35

<laugh> .

Speaker 3: 15:35

Uh, but yeah, the fact that bitter receptors are found all throughout the body is one way to understand that the effects of these herbs are not only in the digestive system, which is kind of what they're most famous for, right? And you know, you can, this is one of those things that everybody, when they're learning herbalism , uh, at some point your teacher's gonna be like, I want you to take this bitter thing. I want you to taste it. I want you to observe what happens in your body, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And if we could do this in a very leisurely way, and we had hours and hours with all of our students, that might be one of the first things we would try with them as a way to impress that herbs do stuff and you can feel it happen, right? Yeah . With bitters, you can feel the increase of your digestive secretions, saliva, right? You can feel your stomach starts to move around as more acid gets secreted, and the stomach itself starts to kind of work a bit. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh, you may not be able to feel your, your bile coming out of the liver <laugh> or the pancreatic fluid coming out of your, your pancreas. Uh, sometimes I sort of imagine, I'm like, was that a little like squirt outta my liver? Did that just happen <laugh> outta my gallbladder? You know , did that just , did that just happen? Did I feel that?

Speaker 2: 16:39

Did I feel my gallbladder <laugh> ?

Speaker 3: 16:41

Um , but those are, those, those are quite perceptible effects. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right ? Either because you can just be like, wow, I'm really salivating now. Or because you're like, I take bitters before this meal. Uh, I don't take bitters before the same meal. I feel really different afterwards

Speaker 2: 16:57

In how I digest it ,

Speaker 3: 16:57

In terms of how I digest it and how it, how it sits in me, you know?

Speaker 2: 17:01

But that whole signaling thing, so when you taste it on your tongue immediately , um, like your body starts signaling , uh, through all different kinds of signaling mechanisms to the, to like your , it starts at your tongue and it goes down through the whole digestive tract and says, oh, we gotta get the engine going so that we're gonna be able to digest food in a minute. But, but that, so that's happening, like that kicks off immediately when you actually taste it. And so if you put bitters in your mouth and then spit them out, don't do that. But you would still be getting many of the effects because the messaging system is kicked off immediately from the receptors on your tongue. Hmm . But then that's not all, because most of the time you don't spit it out, most of the time you'll swallow it, and then as like, literally as it's traveling down your esophagus and into your stomach and traveling through all the parts of your digestive system, you have more bitter receptors through the whole digestive tract. And so whatever of the bitterness didn't get recepted on your tongue. Now it is still available to get recepted , uh, like to be received , uh, throughout the digestive tract. And so some of that signaling, Hey, stomach, get the hydrochloric acid ready, we're gonna have some food. Some of that gets kicked off on the tongue, but some of that also is happening actually in the stomach as the stomach says, oh , it's getting here. Like, I, my receptors are getting full. I better like, speed up this process. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh, yeah. So like all of this messaging , uh, yeah, it's like bitter is like a , you know , when we hear the word messaging, I don't know, we think about marketing <laugh> or like corporate communications

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah .

Speaker 2: 18:56

Or whatever. No ,

Speaker 3: 18:57

No , no , no . Just , just getting the idea out there. Yeah. Yeah .

Speaker 2: 18:59

Yeah .

Speaker 3: 19:00

So, look, a lot of , a lot of what's going on here is a matter of activation of the parasympathetic arm of your nervous system. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right? So sympathetic versus parasympathetic is basically fight and flight versus rest and digest. So parasympathetic is that rest and digest mode, right? When you take bidders, they have those impacts on your digestive organs, but those are conveyed to them through the nerves, right. And especially through the vagus nerve. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right. Which you may have heard about. A lot of people are talking about, you know, the vagus nerve and polyvagal syndromes and like different effects on, on these because they're, they're really, they're literally big nerves, <laugh> <laugh> , and they're big in terms of importance as well, right? They help to convey messages from your kind of central processing unit in your brain, down through all of your visceral organs, make sure that they're coordinated with each other, you know, that everybody's squirting out their juices at the right time or or doing their jobs. Yeah. So that things work in a , in a nice organized way. Um, and bitters essentially enhance that type of communication along with sending those direct signals of wake up, prepare. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Get ready to digest mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 2: 20:11

The vagus nerve. Yeah. It's really, it trendy right now. Like you'll, you'll see tons of stuff on social media about the vagus nerve. It's, it is actually two nerves, a left and a right. Which I find so fascinating 'cause like just the left hemisphere of the brain and the right hemisphere of the brain and whatever. But the vagus nerve starts it at the base of the brain and goes all the way through the whole trunk of your body, and it touches every organ. Uh, and if it is tense, if it is, if you are in that fight or flight mode, if you are in that stress place, then all your nerves are also tensed up. Like just, I don't know if you're listening to this, you can't see me, but I am tensing all the parts of me up, and that's like not a good way to digest your food. And so we sort of think about bitters and digestion and stress and digestion. But, but just to be clear, that digestion is not the only thing that is like impaired by stress. Right ? Right . The way that we breathe changes the way that our blood circulates through the body changes the way that the way that we interpret stim , like Yeah . Information that we are getting in our brains changes the way that our eyes function changes. And so if we have a tool that improves digestion by getting the body into that state where it is prepared to digest food, that, that sounds kinda like trivial. Oh, take bitters, because it'll make you digest your dinner better. But it's actually quite profound. Like it's, it , it's so much larger than that when we think of it in terms of how good digestion happens and the connection to the nervous system and to the sympathetic ver versus the parasympathetic states and to vagus nerve health,

Speaker 3: 22:13

Even before we get to, you know, you are what you digest mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right? Uh, the health of all your organs, the health of all the processes in your body is dependent on the availability of nutrients. And if you don't digest well, you don't, you don't get everything good from your meal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Even if it's fantastic, you know, quality food. Um , I wanna, I wanna make a comparison to adaptogens here actually, because like with adaptogens, sometimes people talk about them as having impacts on the adrenal glands, right? Like, licorice is gonna bolster your adrenal glands,

Speaker 2: 22:43

It's good for adrenal fatigue. Yeah. Right ? You saw the quotes around that, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Yeah. And so that's one way to talk about it. But, and , and some are , some of the adaptation herbs do have direct impacts on particular endocrine organs, right? Like ashwagandha and the thyroid. There's a , a direct effect on that. But one of the great things about adaptogens is that whether they have those like strong direct impacts on a particular endocrine organ, what they all have in common is improving communication between all those organs and other, other parts of your body and your systems immunity and , and , and inflammation and so on. Right? Um, and so it's, it's more than just what does it do to the adrenals? What does it do to the thyroid, right? And in the same way, bitters are more than, what does it do to the liver? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . What does it do to the stomach? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . They're about communication. They're about coordination, right? So it's, it's again, on that level of the, the signal and the, the communications. Yeah. Yeah. And so because of that, it's not just all your juices are flowing, we're getting modulation of inflammatory processes all throughout the body, especially with extended work with bitter herbs, not just a one-time shot. Right. We're getting improvements in metabolic function and yeah. Some of that's straight out of liver activity, but again, some of it's out of coordination with hormones and other types of signals within your system, and even some adjustments to gut flora. Right? And I'm not just talking about bitters like, like , uh, Oregon grape that will directly alter <laugh> some , some of your flora and get some unfriendly critters out of your life. Right. But really every bitter, because of the way it changes, what reaches your, your gut, what reaches your large intestine is gonna change who lives there. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right ? Lemme back up a minute. When you take bitters, you improve your digestive secretions starting with saliva stomach acid, right? That allows you to break down food that you might not have been super efficient at breaking down before. And so you're literally changing what kind of food components <laugh> , right. Reach your gut flora mm-hmm <affirmative> . And ideally they should be well broken down. That's what the flora, like the ones who are friendly to you, right? Right. That's what , that's what they like , uh, what they, they thrive best on. So improving digestion up here really supports flora health down here. And, you know, that's not just about digestion, that's about immunity, that's about hormonal balance. That's about a whole range of different stuff too.

Speaker 2: 25:01

Yeah . When we're thinking about the flora, it's also about creating an environment that they wanna live in. Um, the most friendly microbes that you want in your guts expect a certain acidity, expect a Well, that's true actually in all of your body. Um, they expect a certain , um, like setup of, okay, humans do best with clean air and clean water and, you know, not a bunch of smoke in the air and whatever. Well, microbes don't live in the air. They live inside of our bodies. So they're like the , they're washed in fluids all the time. And bitters change the makeup of the fluids inside our body and specifically into that , the digestive tract. Um, the amount of acid that you produce, the amount of pancreatic juice that you produce, the amount of, like all these things is variable depending on what you're eating and whether or not that's nourishing, but also whether or not you've got the mechanisms in place to do the production that you need, and because the microbes that you want, like that your body wants the most, expect a particular environment, then what we, whatever we can do to create that environment is going to create , uh, a better like distribution or profile or mm-hmm <affirmative> . A set of microbes that then helps us digest our food better. Because some things, some things we can't digest. Some things microbes digest for us mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or synthesize and metabolize some things microbes do for us. Um, okay. Anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:00

Yeah. And that's, that's really important for, you know, certain forms of a , of a sensitivity to foods. And I'm not talking about like a , like a deep allergy <laugh> , right? Like somebody who's celiac or has a , a gluten sensitivity or something like that. But there are some things, including even something like histamine intolerance, right. Which is getting a lot of discussion in recent years. Right . Trendy , uh, some of that can be significantly mitigated by alterations to gut flora. Yeah. Because some of them can break apart histamine that was coming in through that route . Right.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Right, right. So

Speaker 3: 27:30

There's lots, lots of examples like that out there, you know. Um,

Speaker 2: 27:33

Wait, there's one other thing. Can you hold that thought? Yeah, do it . Okay. There was one other thing you said a few minutes ago that I wanted to come back to. 'cause you just sort of said it in one quick sentence and I was like, wow, that was actually super important. And you were talking about change , like changing the way that we assimilate nutrients from our food. Um , and , and like, I think a lot of this, the last few minutes here has been kind of around that, but the key that I wanted to just, the next sentence that I just wanted to say after that was that , um, basically this means that bitters are basically the most important thing. <laugh> because , because because then that, that has just so many impacts beyond like, if you are digesting your food and then as assimilating your food, and then really getting the components that your body needs. That alone, even though we've already actually discussed several mechanisms of mental and emotional health here with bitters, and we'll talk about some more, but even just getting the nutrients alone will make a huge difference in your ability to regulate mental and emotional health. If you don't have enough minerals, then your nerves can't function properly. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And it's going to lead to anxiety, it's going to lead to all kinds of emotional, like, upset, but it's actually kind of hard to get minerals. Um, this is like when, when you make a , when you make an , uh, tea or an infusion and you want the minerals from it, you gotta let it sit overnight or you gotta deco it or something like that so that you really get all the minerals out. Right. Because it's not actually easy to get all those minerals out. Well, that's the same inside your body. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . And if you're not getting them, then that is changing the way that your nervous system relays messages or fails to relay messages or relays them falsely or whatever else. Right. And okay, that's just one example, but there's just, anyway, I just wanted to like push that next sentence because it really is critically important.

Speaker 3: 29:47

Yeah. All sy all the systems are connected, right? <laugh> . Yeah. This is holistic herbalism, after all

Speaker 2: 29:53

<laugh> . Uh , we have literally only just now got through the first that's we're doing . We're doing good . We're doing great . It's gonna be a really long episode. We're sorry, <laugh> .

Speaker 3: 30:01

Yeah. And so, I mean, already you've gotten the sense that we think bitters are really important and that they in fact have been for humans always. Right? And so you might wonder if you look around at modern diets and be like, well, where did the bitters go? Or were people really so different back in the day that these bitter greens tasted good to them, or that they intentionally sought out these flavors on purpose?

Speaker 2: 30:22

Or even wait , it could be even a level higher than that. Like, oh, so what did they do before they had tinctures? How were they taking their bitters before meals? No, the , the meal was the bitter Yeah. Because vegetables were bitter . Right?

Speaker 3: 30:37

Right. Uh, so yeah. Um, when, when we were all hunter gatherers <laugh>, right . Uh , when we were all living off of what was available to us in our environments, people ate a really great variety of foods, and especially plant foods. Part of that was about seasonality, right? What's growing now isn't gonna be here or is gonna be as abundant or as beautiful in a month or in three months. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . Um, and some of it was also because people would be, you know, wandering through areas or however their society was set up, right. So , um, people always had these in their diets, and at those times they weren't necessarily taking them as medicine. Right. It was more about like, well, this is the green leafy thing that's here right now, and we eat it and it's got a better flavor to it. And that's part of our life. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And it's part of our human story for a long enough period of time that we regard this as something essential to the human experience in the same way that walking every day is essential to the human experience or, or human health. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . Because it's so strongly matches what so many generations of our ancestors did. And there's been a break in that in our society, you know , uh, today and for, you know, a hundred, 150 years <laugh> , however you decide to draw the line on that. Right. That's a very short period of time in comparison to our evolutionary history. Right ? Yeah. So , um, as we've gone through time, of course we've changed our environments and we've changed where our food comes from and how it gets processed before it enters our mouth. And in the course of all of that, most of the vegetables that we've domesticated have actually lost a lot of their nutrient content mm-hmm <affirmative> . And some of this is because of a large , large part of this is because of generations of selective breeding to make the vegetable larger and sweeter and more appealing. And that's, you know, reasonable <laugh> <laugh> and understand why somebody wants like the biggest reddest sweetest tomato around. Sure. Uh , but there is a consequence that comes along with that. Right. And at at the same time, there's also been processes like climate change, like global warming. Right. And also changes to the soil content because of repetitive industrial agriculture. Right. Which have led to changes in the composition of the plant. Um, so all of these things have basically led to more sugar in the vegetables. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . More sweetness and less other stuff. <laugh> , right? Yeah. Including phytochemicals that have bitter flavors or some other like, strong flavors, maybe like pungent or sharp or accurate or, or other things like that mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so the result might be a vegetable that pleases the palate , but deprives your body of something that was ancestrally important , uh, expected or like every day and became protective to our bodies as we adapted to having that in our lives all the time.

Speaker 2: 33:37

It's really important to recognize that like, just like your schedule, you can only do a finite number of things in a day. Right. You can't just keep cramming more things into your day. Although I would, I would like to, the same is true inside of a plant, right? There's, there's space for a finite number of ingredients of constituents of that plant. And so as a plant creates more sugar so that your carrot is sweeter, so that, you know, whatever, it has less, we keep saying other stuff. Well, what is that other stuff? It has less minerals, it has less proteins, plant proteins. It has less of the like , uh, essential oils or less of the, the stronger also constituents

Speaker 3: 34:33

And the things that are called secondary metabolites and are often what we are most interested in as herbalists and looking at plants as, as having medicinal activity to them. Right. Things that aren't necessary for the basic metabolic survival of that plant, but supported in other ways, like deterring pests mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or helping it resist UV radiation or, or other things like that. And they might have similar benefits for us, or they might do something in US very different from what they do in the plant, but, but they're, they're again, not just about like, making energy and keeping the plant cells alive and allowing it to generate, you know , uh, to generate sugar through photosynthesis and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 35:11

Yeah. So the key here is that intentionally humans said, Hey, if I had bigger carrots, I wouldn't need to get so many carrots. 'cause they'd be bigger. Yes. Hey, if these carrots tasted a little better, that would be great too. And so the way that that happened was the plant that made the tastiest carrots, okay, well those are the seeds I want for next year. So that's like a natural, probably . It's not like it was GMO or anything like that. It was , you know, we've been doing this for thousands of years, this

Speaker 3: 35:44

Is how we ended up with corn. This is how we ended up with the things that we recognize as apples.

Speaker 2: 35:49

Right, right. Right. Exactly. You know ? Yeah , exactly. So that , I don't wanna like say that, that that's evil. Um, but it does come with, even if I use the word consequences, that still sounds pretty bad, but like, it's a trade off . So, okay. So we've been doing that for a long time, but then we've, we've done this industrial agriculture for a long time, which means that soils don't have the mineral content that they once had because we remove all the rocks so that it's easier for the machines to go through because we don't replace the minerals in the soil , um, except for the absolute minimum required to produce a product, not to produce health. And then, so, okay, so now there's no minerals to take up. But then also , um, as there's more carbon dioxide in the air, like on one hand that's great for fast plant growth, right? But the flip side of that is they're producing primarily sugars. And this is not good for humans or animals because especially if we think about herbivores who depend on the plant proteins that they're gonna then synthesize and their bodies work that way , um, you know, 'cause they're a cow and they've got four chambered stomachs or whatever. Yeah . Well now they're not getting enough protein because it's not there in the hay anymore. It is primarily sugars. Um, so it's like all of these things that are degrading the quality of the vegetables while also making them sweeter. And, you know, I think about honey crisp apples, those are my favorite. And they're so delicious. It's like candy on a tree, but it's nothing like what an apple used to be. So when we think about what people ate, even if we think about like, well, just vegetables and whatever, it's hard to imagine what that was really like and how big a role bitters played. No one had to intentionally take bitters before a meal. Nobody ever even had to think about bitter. That just was like the air that you breathe. Hmm . And we didn't used to have to think about the air that we breathe either, but now we do. And

Speaker 3: 37:58

Now we do. Yeah . Yeah . And so this is all to say that there's even more reason now than there ever has been before to intentionally incorporate bitters into your life, right ? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And by the way, there are different ways to do it. Anything that tastes bitter is a bitter <laugh> <laugh> . So if you have a salad before a meal and or with your meal, and it includes bitter greens like CIO or endive , Andie , Aldi , however you prefer to say it , <laugh> , uh, then there's some bitter for you. Right. And that's helpful. And that's where that tradition of a salad before the meal comes from, right? Or when people are taking , uh, uh, an tif like a little, a little bitter cocktail liqueur or cocktail or something like that , uh, before a meal like ler laur or whatever like this, those things are also there because they support digestion. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . They're there to be taken before you have a big meal, especially a holiday meal, something like that. Yeah . Right? Because they help you to, to handle it better. Or even black coffee, right? There's a lot of places where it's normal to drink a little black coffee with your meal, and black coffee is a bitter herb, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . It serves that same kind of function. Um, so yeah. Well ,

Speaker 2: 39:11

Don't worry. So , so it doesn't have to be too complicated, right? Like if you are somewhere out and about in the world and you don't have your fancy little tincture bottle of bitters , um, then that's okay. Like in most places you can get some black coffee , um, or you might have access to a , a bitter salad or something like that. Yeah. Um , but just, just to like start at the very lowest, simplest level here that it used to just be part of our dietary environment, and it actually still can be. Yeah. You have to work a little harder to find bitter flavors in our modern food environment, but it's not impossible to do it. And so that's your starting point . So

Speaker 3: 39:57

It's worth doing. Yeah . Yeah. Yeah . And look, this is all like, we're , we're connecting this through, through ancestry, through diet, through changes on like , uh, on these large scales, like the way people eat and <laugh> what they regard as food and so on. Um, and it's because we, we see really frequently and every arbois we know, sees really frequently people who are , uh, dealing with a whole constellation of issues, which bitters can touch olive, right? Bitters can work on a whole range of , of problems. And one way to say it is like this, bitter herbs can help with dry mouth and heartburn and indigestion and bloating and constipation and dysbiosis of the flora and malabsorption of your nutrients. And they can also help out with detoxification functions in your body, and they can help with inflammation. And when we get to the psychoemotional stuff, they can help with anxiety and depression and sleep and, and we could keep going, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's one way to say it, but another way to say it is that all of those things are predictable results of a life without any bitter in it. And so this is sometimes referred to as bitter deficiency syndrome.

Speaker 2: 41:08

<laugh>

Speaker 3: 41:09

<laugh> , right?

Speaker 2: 41:09

Yeah . Which is not, it's not like a real syndrome, it's just a thing that, that herbalists say. Yeah. And it, but it is, it is real, right? Like the human. So if you think about this, human bodies do not synthesize vitamin C cat bodies do, cats do not have to eat oranges or kale because they can create vitamin C themselves. Humans cannot do it. Why can humans not do it? It's clearly possible cats can do it. Why can't humans do it? Because throughout all of our evolutionary ancestral history, we have gotten vitamin C from our food. And anything that we have to synthesize is more expensive. Yeah. It's harder for us to do if we can just eat it. That is so much easier. And the body has so much work, it already has to do that. It's not gonna be like, well, I can just get vitamin C from vegetables, and in fact, my normal expected environment has vitamin C in it every single day. But you know, I'm just gonna go that extra mile. I'm just gonna synthesize it myself. No. That like, there's too much other work to do. So recognizing that humans require consumption of vitamin C because human bodies cannot synthesize it, it , it doesn't mean that like we have some sort of problem with us because we can't make it. It's just that that's how bodies evolved. Yeah. Just like we expected a diurnal cycle, sun and then darkness and sun and darkness. And so we evolved with bitters and we do not have a mechanism for efficiently starting the digestive process independently of what we are consuming. So like, if you just imagine that vitamin C was the kickoff to, it's not, but you know, something that we could synthesize ourselves, we can't self synthesize this process. And so to say that, oh, I have constipation and I can take a bitter to fix that, isn't that cool how nature provides the solution to my problem, <laugh>? No, no, no. The problem was here because of having left nature, the problem was here because the body actually requires bitters so that the poop will come out <laugh>.

Speaker 3: 43:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And you can get by without it. Just like you can get by without vitamin C for a while, for

Speaker 2: 43:49

A while , <laugh> . Right?

Speaker 3: 43:50

But there are gonna be, there are gonna be some problems that emerge sooner than others. The longer that you go on deprived of this thing, the more systemic and severe the problems are gonna get. And so that brings us back to another point about this whole bitter deficiency syndrome is, again, it's not just about digestion mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, that this reaches to psychological and emotional issues as well. Um, and so you can say that the, the gut and psychology are linked, and so you need to mind the gap, the gut and psychology, GAP mind me , that

Speaker 2: 44:22

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 44:22

Yeah. Okay. It's fun, but look like that, that part I think is really worth keeping in mind. And it's, it's also worth keeping in mind for those of you who are like moving on in your training as an herbalist a bit, and you're like, all right , I'm ready to help some people. I'm ready to do some tough stuff. I'm ready to get to some, like, let's get some depression. Let's work on some anxiety for people that's really making it hard for them. I I'm ready for that. I can get past the stomach ache. Now,

Speaker 2: 44:49

<laugh>,

Speaker 3: 44:50

Don't leave your bitters behind when you move on to more, more difficult cases, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Never neglect the fundamentals even, or maybe especially for, for the most severe situations that you find yourself trying to help people with. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I think.

Speaker 2: 45:05

<laugh> , I'm with you .

Speaker 3: 45:07

All right . So , um, when we think about herbs, when we, when we understand them, we look at them often through the lens of energetics. Is this herb heating or cooling? Is it moistening or drying? Is it tifying or relaxant? Um, these fundamental spectra help us to understand our herb, to orient it in relation to others, put it into an effective formula, match it to the right person, <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 45:31

So , and , and I think also to see it in its full context, when we say bitters will help digestion, there's an extremely small view of what is really going on. But when we look at the energetic actions and we say, oh, okay , um, this is stimulating of like fluids in the body. Um, this is like, has a most , like most commonly drying aspect or whatever else, then we can, we can break out and say like, oh, I need a plant that can be drying and draining and I don't have a lot of options right now. If you are thinking that a certain bitter plant, let's go with , um, I don't know . I, let's do something super, super just bitter and go with Centauri. Um , and you're thinking, oh, that's for the stomach. Okay, yes it is. But if you think about it energetically and you recognize, okay, well it's cooling, it's drying and , and draining and, and a little astringent, a little tonifying, then if you are someplace and you're like, Hmm , I don't have a lot of herbs available, but I do have my centaury with me because I take that as my bitter before a meal. And , uh, this other person is having this other problem of too much moisture and too much laxity in the body. Well, SAU is not just for digestion, right? It has these, these actions and those actions are going to work in many aspects of the body. And so then, so what we're saying here is that when you think about things energetically, you are not pigeonholing your herbs into one particular place that they're effective mm-hmm <affirmative> . But you're able to see the full context of their skill, of their talent, of their abilities, of their actions, so that you can plug that in in many more places than you thought you could.

Speaker 3: 47:35

Yeah. And energetics, it comes in, it comes in tendencies rather than, than definitives. Right? So there's two ways to talk about bitters here. One would be to say that bitters are almost always drying, usually cooling, and there's a lot more variability in terms of tifying and relaxing . We could also say that what in an herb is bitter is gonna be drying and cooling, and then maybe, maybe more often relaxing . But in that same herb, there's a bunch of other stuff, right? That can alter or overwhelm or adjust those, those energetics that the bitter elements are contributing, right?

Speaker 2: 48:21

Yeah. That was why also choosing SAU as the option, because Centre is fairly purely bitter, right? Doesn't mean that there's nothing else going on. Yeah . Um, but so you can depend on it to like fit those real classic , um, actions. Yeah. Whereas if we thought of something like Callus or Ella campaign where they've got a lot of other stuff going on in the plant, like, like heating components and spiciness and like all these different flavors just because they're a very complex plant with lots of different,

Speaker 3: 48:55

But they have complex phy flavors is the thing, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:57

Phyto chemistry , right? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:58

So with, with a calamus or an Angelica, you taste bitter. You also taste puny. And puny says heat, puny says fire. Right? So you can say, all right , so there is the bitter element disturb , you know, if we were to somehow remove all the fire from Calamus , it would, it would be a cooling bitter plant, right? <laugh>, but that pungency is there, that fire is there. And so it overwhelms that innate innate cooling quality of the, of the, the bitter unto itself. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:24

It's like, because so frequently, almost always plants themselves are formulas, right? Right . Plants are complex. You are a formula. Also, you are not just a person who likes herbs. You like also other things, and that makes you like, maybe you have some friends who only know that you're the plant person, that's fine. But there, there's a lot of complexity to you as a person. Hmm . That's true in the plants as well at that chemistry level. There, there just a lot of complexity going on. And so we can think about each plant as its own formula, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 50:03

So if I, if I tasted something, I don't know what plant it is and it just tastes straight up bitter, I'm gonna expect it 99 times out of a hundred, I'm gonna expect it to be a drying influence on my system. Uh, and think of it this way, when you secrete fluids, they go somewhere, <laugh>,

Speaker 2: 50:20

<laugh> ,

Speaker 3: 50:20

Even if you secrete them into the tubes inside of your body, many of them are still gonna exit your body <laugh> . Right . Some stuff gets reabsorbed. Yeah. Okay. But a lot of it exits, right? So you squeeze the juice out of the meat of you into the tube of you, and then it's gonna leave you <laugh> <laugh> . And so, so yeah. Ultimately that, that has a drying impact. A lot of, a lot of bitter herbs are also gonna have some diuretic action, right? 'cause again, it's not only your stomach and your liver. There can be kidney activation here as well. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so there can be that, that root to dryness. Uh , at the same time,

Speaker 2: 50:52

Please always do that, always be thinking about, oh, I am secreting fluids out of the meat of me into the tube of me and out of me. And that's why it is drying. Don't just memorize s drying because then you have , you've no way to explain that to somebody. You don't understand the mechanism of action. You're just trusting somebody else who told you that it was drying. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't trust anybody. Don't trust us. <laugh> , work through that in your, in your own mind and in your own body mm-hmm <affirmative> . And thinking through like how is it drying? How is that happening? Um, so that, okay. I mean, you don't so much have to say, how is cayenne heating? Like it's really spicy. It , it's heating because it's really spicy, or , or sometimes it's super obvious, but sometimes when it's like, oh, it's draining. Well , what does that mean? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And it's not that it's not obvious. I mean, it's not , it wasn't super complicated. It's draining. Yeah. You're squirting out fluids so that you can use them in the digestive process and then you're going to remove them from your body and you're gonna need to make more of those fluids. Yeah. So you end up literally draining the fluid out of you. Hmm . But, but going through that process of like saying that to yourself so that you really understand why it's working, why it's happening, that also is going to give you such a broader spectrum of ability to apply any given herb to many different situations. Uh , which is just always good. 'cause you don't always have everything at your fingertips.

Speaker 3: 52:38

Yeah, yeah , yeah. So we taste something bitter. We expect it to be drying. There are exceptions. Stay tuned. Yeah. <laugh> , uh, if it, if it has bitter without a bunch of other flavors on top, it's usually gonna be cooling in nature. Right? Generally, if it's bitter, but it doesn't have a pungent flavor to it, or a spicy flavor to it at all, then you'd say, all right , this is gonna be net cooling. We expect that. That's the , the more common one. And then fortifying and relaxant with this, you could either say that it's highly variable and think on the one hand of golden seal , like wicked, wicked, tifying , herb <laugh> , right? Or mother wart, right. Almost as bitter. I mean, in terms of just straight up bitterness, they're, they're fairly close, right? But mother wood is extremely relaxed and as an herb , right? So we could say there's like strong variability between all of our bitter plants . We could also say maybe that it's about where they're , which tissues or systems they're most active on, right? Like mother wart is an amazing bitter, but it doesn't have a lot of activity on mucus membranes. It has a lot of activity on nervous system, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Whereas golden Seal is like, gimme those mucosa, I'm gonna squeeze 'em tight. Uh , but not a ton of nervous system activity there, right? So you could say in general Bitters, we could expect them to like tonify our digestive mucosa and relax our nerves, right? Because of that parasympathetic activation. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And certainly in terms of your own emotional experience, like as a lay person , do you say, I feel tense or I feel relaxed right now because of that parasympathetic effect. It's more often that kind of subjective relaxation mm-hmm <affirmative> . That you experience, right? So to find relaxant is a little complicated. Think about tissues, think about like the variation between diff different bitter plants. Um, and just let that be. Yep . Yeah . Alright . So, you know, energetics are important in and of themselves. They help us match herbs to people. Uh, but between your energetics and the tissue affinities that a , a plant has, that's where our actions come from, right? Um, when an herb , uh, like a , like a bitter comes into your body, it stimulates, as we've said over and over digestion, right? Uh, you can say that they're appetite stimulants, that they're digestive tonics, that they're oligos, they make the bile flow , right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and so those are all about like waking up digestion, getting it moving, improving the efficiency and so on. Um, and those are the most famous effects of bitters. Sometimes they're the most obvious effects of them. There's a little nuance here too, though, right? When we talk about the appetite with bitters, I find them super, super helpful for people who wake up in the morning and they're not hungry for breakfast, right? Maybe because they ate late or like close to bedtime last night, or it's just been their habit for years and years. But if you wake up in the morning, you take some bitters, you can generate some hunger for breakfast, and that can be really helpful. Another thing though, and if you dig into some bitter science <laugh> , you'll find this as well , is that bitters can reduce overeating behavior. And so for some people, you hear those two things next to each other and you're like, that's kind of contradictory. What's going on here? Right? Um, and I think in one sense it's, it's, it's not actually contradictory at all. They're about waking up the stomach and helping the rest of you to be connected to your stomach and what's happening in it. <laugh>,

Speaker 2: 55:59

Right? Like, if you're not getting the message that you're full, if you're not getting the message that you're sated satisfied, then you'll keep eating. And it's important to recognize also that food science and food engineering like that is an entire industry specifically created to override those signals so that you will eat more, so that you will then purchase more. So, so that is important to recognize. But , um, you know, what if you were eating something that wasn't engineered, what if you were just eating like cherries or something like that mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, getting that signal from your body into your brain that says, I had enough, I don't need anymore . Well, a all of that is about having that connection between your brain and your body, which is why when you are eating at the computer , um, you know you're working and you're snacking, it is a lot harder to know when you should stop snacking. Yeah . Because you don't need any more food because your , your brain is inside the computer. It's not inside your body anymore. It's in the computer doing the work on the computer. And your body is just like sort of sitting there by itself. Like I guess I'm snacking <laugh> . Um , yeah.

Speaker 3: 57:15

Yeah . Where is the attention in your body? Yeah . What , which signals are getting through to the brain to your consciousness, right ? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . To where you, where you really experience them. Yeah. Um, and so in this way, bitters are , are kind of an awareness medicine. Yeah. You know, awareness for what's going on inside of yourself. Mm . That's pretty deep, huh? <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. You know, through this suite of digestive effects and stuff we mentioned before, right? Like helping to break down your food into more readily digested or readily absorbed components. Um, and through some of those effects on the gut flora, right? There can be a predictable impact on your blood sugar levels when you start to work with bitters to help bring them into a more normal range, right? To reduce spikes, to re , to reduce troughs as well, but especially to reduce the, the high spikes of, of blood sugar level. Um, and just as a side comment , uh, in recent years, berberine in particular has become very popular as a supplement or a nutraceutical or an isolate to take to improve blood sugar regulation. And I'm not saying it doesn't work, 'cause Yes it does, but , um, sometimes it con confusion , but I'm

Speaker 2: 58:21

Saying it's not a good idea,

Speaker 3: 58:22

<laugh> . But yeah. This, this odd thing happens though, where people hear that about berberine and then they learn that berberine comes from plants and then they say, great, I can go and I can grab a plant tincture and I can take it and it will give me the berberine and that will normalize my blood sugar. And the the nuance here is that we do expect them to get some improvement in their blood sugar level, but not solely because of the berberine in that plant. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Especially because in a lot of cases the dose they're taking of their herb extract is providing a tiny amount of berberine in comparison to the capsules of isolated berberine that are clinically proven to reduce blood sugar by this many points and so on.

Speaker 2: 59:01

Yeah. Yeah . But the thing is that , uh, it's also really tifying really tightening really drying, and so it's not without a cost. Yeah . Uh, you can get, you can get to where you're taking that and it's sure it is helping blood sugar levels, but it's also like giving you gut cramping and making it harder even to absorb nutrients because everything is astringent so much in the guts.

Speaker 3: 59:31

So what I would say here is if people are excited when they hear about the, the benefits of plant medicines to improve their blood sugar, I wouldn't say what you have to do is find the herb with the most berberine in it and get that <laugh> right. I would say find the bitter that matches your body, your needs, your set of systems and symptoms as well as it can. 'cause that's gonna be the best one for you over the long run. Yeah. And blood sugar regulation is not a short term job <laugh> . Right,

Speaker 2: 59:55

Right,

Speaker 3: 59:56

Right . This is a long term .

Speaker 2: 59:56

It's an everyday job. Yeah .

Speaker 3: 59:58

Right , right , right. Yeah . Okay. So other actions of bidders that we can always suspect , right? Any bidder, we expect all these actions we're describing here. Uh, so it's like you mentioned before, draining, right? Uh, and that can be very helpful when there's fluid bloating, right? Maybe there's fluid bloating around the belly. Well, let's get some bitters into you mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right ? Let's try to drain that excess fluid, like stir it up, move it around, get it to your kidney, drain it out of the system. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, reduce that, that, you know, fluid retention really, really handy

Speaker 2: 1:00:28

Plus a lot is when we're thinking specifically about belly bloating, a lot of that fluid is coming from problems in digestion . Um, either because you're eating something that your body is sensitive or intolerant of. Um, and so you're actually having an immune response and that fluid that is bloating is literally lymph, like immune system response. It's, you have lymphatic glands all around your digestive tract exactly the same as the ones in your neck when you were a little kid and you wanted to stay home sick from school 'cause you didn't feel good or because you were trying to avoid a test. Um, and then like your parent would touch your throat to see if your glands were swollen and if they were swollen, then you were allowed to stay home because that means you're sick. Because if those glands are swollen, that is an indication of immune activity. Right. Does that make you feel differently about the bloating in your belly? It's the exact same in, in many, many cases. Sometimes it's just like, you know, gas or, or that kind of thing. But when, when it is a bunch of fluid in response to what you ate, it's the same as your glands in your throat getting swollen. So that is your body saying something here is triggering an immune response, something here is not working Right. And when we in , when we introduce bitters into that situation, we're repairing so much of the digestive process. Now, it would also be great to extra juice <laugh> foods that are causing this , um, intolerant sort of situation or sensitivity situation. Yep . Um, and if, you know, because we mentioned mast cell activation syndrome and, and that is like kind of very tied up here. It it, you could just lay that on top of everything that just got said. Like there's, there's a lot , there's so many parallels here. Um, because that, that immune response, there is an inflammatory aspect of that. And mast cells, while they're not the entire immune , uh, inflammation cascade, they are part of the inflammation cascade. So recognizing that by removing the food , that that part is important, removing the foods that are causing that extra inflammatory response. But the other part of that is bringing in the bitters to repair the digestive function. Yeah . Um, is it's all this stuff is super important and we, when we say, oh, it'll just make the bloating go away, <laugh> . Like, we just think, oh, then my jeans won't feel bad after a meal or whatever. And we don't really think through that. What's going on there is an immune response that really does need to be addressed. Yeah. So I I don't ever wanna miss the opportunity to Yeah ,

Speaker 3: 1:03:22

Yeah . Yeah. So, you know, between that, those like direct influences on the way the immune , uh, process unfolds between those effects on normalizing the blood sugar levels , um, improving digestion, reducing inflammation in the GI tract itself, which can be like, you know, the spark and then the fire spreads throughout the rest of your body through all of these effects. Bitters have anti-inflammatory actions to them . Right. Um, and of course that's really relevant in , uh, a time in , in the world when most of the chronic diseases people are coping with are inflammatory in nature. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing about bitters is that they can have antimicrobial effects and some of them are more famous for this than others, right. Like , uh, wormwood and other plants that contain artes in and then any of the plants that contain berberine. Right. Like golden seal and Oregon grapefruit , um, famously herbal antimicrobials. Yes. Uh, but almost every bitter constituent is serving an antimicrobial role in the plant it grows in or, or is produced by. Right. So remember, plants make these chemicals for their own purposes.

Speaker 2: 1:04:30

Yeah. They're not doing this because they're like altruistically trying to help humans out like this. Plants are living creatures, living beings all on their own and they're creating all these chemicals to like phytochemicals to enable their own lives, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:04:47

Um, and so they don't have tongues, they don't have stomachs, they don't have livers <laugh>. Okay . Uh , but they do sometimes get attacked by microbes and these constituents can help combat them. So , uh, if you find yourself , uh, with your little herb, herb travel kit somewhere and you realize you didn't pack anything for an infected wound , get the bitterest , uh, remedy you've got mm-hmm <affirmative> . And put it on there mm-hmm <affirmative> . And you can expect some, some improvements for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So again, if it's a bitter herb, you can expect all of those actions we just discussed. Any bitter plant is gonna have other actions as well on top of those. And that's where we get into differentiating them and what makes them unique and why we choose this one over that one for this purpose, for this problem, for this person ,

Speaker 2: 1:05:34

For this person . Yeah. Exactly. Yeah . Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3: 1:05:38

Um, just briefly, 'cause we've mentioned constituents, you know, and, and phyto chemistry once or twice , um, your bitter taste receptors do not respond to one chemical that is the bitter compound <laugh> of the world. <laugh>

Speaker 2: 1:05:52

Capital, the capital bitter TM <laugh> . Right,

Speaker 3: 1:05:56

Right. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of different , um, types of chemistry that are going to , are gonna trigger that, that bitter response that that uh, that flavor, that taste. But also all of these reactions within your body we've been discussing. Um, so that can include terpenoids and we go like category terpenoids and then the mono terpenoids. And a group in there in particular is like super, super bitter. They're called seco oid compounds. And a couple of examples come out of , uh, genin and , uh, related plants, including centi . Um, one of the most bitter compounds that's been found on earth so far is called gent piro side . And that comes, you can hear genia in it, right? Like it comes outta that group. Um , there's also Amaro genin , which is basically like, if you break the word down, Amaro is bitter. Genin is like from the ens <laugh> . So, you know, sometimes chemistry names look intimidating, but actually they're really simple. It's the bitter stuff from the gentian plants. <laugh> . Yeah . Cool. Cool. Um, so that's one group. But

Speaker 2: 1:07:00

Like, even even that, that's just two examples, both found in the gentian plant mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, and other plants as well, just because it has the name Gentian in there. Oh yeah . Right . Doesn't mean that other plants don't also have it . What that means is the first time that we discovered it in such a way that it required a name, we were looking at gentian at the time. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:07:23

You can, you can play a game when you, when you read constituent names and be like, do I recognize the plant that comes from, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . So in the, in a related group here called Sesqui Terpene Lactone, these are like small terpenoid compounds with a particular ring structure on them. Uh, we find artes in and axus in. And if you're thinking, Hey, is that from Artemesia mug ? Wart wormwood? Is that from Taraxacum ? Dandelion? Then give yourself some points. You did it <laugh> . Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:07:54

Good job. But, but Artemisinin is not like, you should not expect that it can only ever be found in the Artemesia family. Right. Uh , one of my favorite examples for this is ol mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, ol T-H-Y-M-O-L. Uh, you are like, well , oh , that's in time. Yeah . And it's in like basically every mint plant. Oh , yeah. Yeah . Or , or all the smelly mint plants. Um, and then you're like, or like li lial

Speaker 3: 1:08:30

Al Yeah. Lin al oil .

Speaker 2: 1:08:34

Yeah . Yeah. With two o with two O's right next to each other.

Speaker 3: 1:08:36

Some people say Lilu , but whatever. You can say what you want. It doesn't matter. <laugh>. Right . So, but that one is most famously found in lavender mm-hmm <affirmative> . But it turns out in a bunch of other floral, floral bits

Speaker 2: 1:08:46

As well. Right, right, right. Yeah . And so we get in these places where we think like, oh, that is called time all because it's in time. And then we're like shocked when it's in oregano. No. Like they smell really similar, but then we're like shocked when it's in a plant that we didn't necessarily think about time when we, you know, but, but that's the thing. We just name these chemicals based on the plant that we found them in first. Right . And just always remembering that they can show up in other plants too. Just like you maybe use a wooden spoon in your kitchen. That doesn't mean that other people don't use wooden spoons too. If it's a helpful tool, it's a helpful tool. Yeah . Right . And lots of people may have figured out that a wooden spoon is really great 'cause it doesn't scratch the bottom of the pan and it this and that and whatever. It doesn't get hot. Um, so there are like lots of great reasons to use one. Plants do the same thing with these chemicals. So like, oh, hey, if I make this, that's gonna make my life easier. Yeah. But lots of plants may have figured that out.

Speaker 3: 1:09:50

Yeah. On the other hand, not every plant can make every chemical. And there are a few things that seem to be very particular, you know, like maybe just a genus <laugh> <laugh> , uh, if not a , if not only one species. Um, a terpenoid , uh, example of bitter compounds include kawa and ol , which both come from coffee <laugh> <laugh> . Right. Remember, we've been talking about black coffee. Um, and even some tri terpenoids can be bitter. Like there's one called Actian , which is found in , um, act mosa or black koosh . And there I just mentioned that. 'cause now we've gone from mono terpenoids to sesqui to dye to try. So we're getting like progressively larger molecules here. Um, and the thing about bitter as a flavor is it's not bound to only super tiny molecules or only super big ones. Um, contrast that with something like the mucilaginous sensation or flavor, that's only gonna come from big molecules, polysaccharides mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . These things that if you draw a chemical diagram, they take up half the page <laugh> if you , if you , if you really draw the whole thing. Right. Um, so bitter is something that we can, we can detect from a really broad range of like sizes and shapes of molecules. It's, it's something that our, our bodies clearly wanted to pay extra attention to because we developed this flexibility in what we, what we notice.

Speaker 2: 1:11:08

If you're, if you're wondering what the size is going on there, a mono terpenoid, that's one sesqua is one and a half Ds terpenoids are two and triterpenes ter terin are three. Yeah. So that is re referring to when you look at the molecule itself, they're getting progressively larger because there's more things stacked around,

Speaker 3: 1:11:36

Like more units are added on.

Speaker 2: 1:11:38

Right. Right. Right. So that's, that's what we're talking about in terms of that molecule size. And the reason that that's so important is that it, it means that the receptors we have for bitter either are very flexible and they can cept many different sizes, many different types of molecules or, and in fact it's gonna be, and or, and or , yeah . Um, we have many types of receptors because we realized that all of these different molecules were really helpful and we needed to be able to grab onto each different kind. So we need to be able to make a receptor , uh, that will specifically grab each one of those

Speaker 3: 1:12:24

And then to trigger similar responses. Right. So if it's one receptor that's multi powered, or if it's multi multiple receptors that all feed into the same signal mm-hmm <affirmative> . That comes in and says, bitter up here and says, wake up down here. Right. <laugh>, <laugh> , um, then thanks, evolution. Pretty, pretty good job on that one. Yeah. Um, couple other constituent categories that can taste bitter. Uh, some of the flavonoids, right. Um, cetin is one that's actually very common in like green leafy veggies. And this is where people who, like some people will taste things like kale and detect a bitter note to it. Um, and those tend to be like super tasters for bitter. Uh, the person reacts much more strongly to bitter flavors than the average average human does. Um, that's one of those kind of variants in, in human taste, like the cilantro thing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , like, like a bunch of stuff. But some people look, if you have a friend and you give them , uh, a tincture of , uh, a moderate bitter like , uh, like yaro and you're like, this is, this is not super intense. This isn't like, you know, gentian root , this is like, okay. And they take it and they're like, then they may just be a bitter super taster and they may be just fine with some mild bitters <laugh> that that may do the job for them. They ,

Speaker 2: 1:13:41

They may also just be a person who eats a ton of sugar, could just be new to it. Yes. Like , yeah. Like, and so they're like not calibrated for bitter. Yeah. But, but that whole concept of a super taster , like, listen, we are not all the same actually , uh, we didn't all put our bodies together the exact same way. Like yeah, okay, we've, we've all got these bodies, but they're not, like, your heart is not in exactly the same place as my heart and all your different organs. There's variability in size, in location, in shape, in like, how many receptors did you make for this thing versus that thing, and how many capillaries do you have here or there or whatever. There is not, it's not like you cut us all open and we're exactly the same inside. We're not exactly the same outside. We're not exactly the same inside either. Even though you look at the anatomy books and it shows one picture mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's, that is like the composite standardized picture. It's not how bodies actually are. And if you want more information about that, then just ask any med student because like, this is, you know, famously, especially like a med surg student , um, because this is famously a thing when they start doing real dissections and they're like, hold on, nothing is where it's supposed to be <laugh> . It's not where it was on the book. And

Speaker 3: 1:14:58

How did your heart get over there on the right.

Speaker 2: 1:15:00

Yeah. Right. <laugh> . But the , but that's the thing. It's just like all of our bodies are different. And so, so we have this like, oh, it's a super taster . Yeah. That's only for the people who like have the job where they taste the wine and tell you what's in it. No, no, no. All different people have different numbers of receptors for things. And so Sure. It might just be that they live a high sugar lifestyle and that can be calibrated for, but it may also be that they just have a ton of receptors.

Speaker 3: 1:15:27

Right. There's hardware and software differences, right? Yes . Like how many receptors you have versus how often you use them <laugh>. Yeah . Versus just like how familiar you are, how your , how your body processes the priority of the signals. Yeah. Yeah . Okay. So anyway, cetin is like a thing that turns up in green , green leafy stuff, and then another flavonoid ine this turns up in , um, in citrus peels, right? So if you ever, you know, you eat citrus, you maybe you are like really picky and you peel off all the white stuff. I urge you to eat the white stuff <laugh>, that's got the white stuff , that's got some of the best stuff there for you ine and other associated flavonoids, like nice anti-inflammatory action there. Mm-hmm . Um, cool things. And then finally, well , not finally, but another example before I close here. Alkaloids, right. A lot of alkaloids can be quite bitter. Um, and alkaloids is a big group. It's a complicated group because it's not strictly about like molecular shape sometimes it's about, well that chemical just has a real strong action on human nervous systems. So we're gonna call it an alkaloid <laugh> , right ?

Speaker 2: 1:16:27

It's like the adaptogens of the world ,

Speaker 3: 1:16:29

As long as it has nitrogen molecule in or nitrogen atom in there somewhere. And it acts strongly on the nervous system. Yeah. That's, that's an alkaloid. Sure . <laugh> . Right. So there's a lot of variety there, but some of them are very bitter and very famously, so like quinine is , uh, what's called an indole alkaloid. That's the group it's in. And quinine is a very powerfully bitter substance. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah. Uh , and then berberine, right in the iso quinlin group , uh, those are of course also famously very bitter. And it's not just berberine there. Right. It's , um, uh, it's Hydrea and a couple of other related , uh, uh, compounds as well that are very similar to berberine and , and work synergistically with it. And that's why we always like to get not just one berberine herb , but gimme as many as you can find and put 'em into a mixed tincture. Yeah . Or, or a mixed spray or something like that. 'cause that works better. Yeah. For, for , uh, infection management.

Speaker 2: 1:17:22

And anytime that we mention berberine containing plants and infection management, I just always want to note it is topical only. Yeah. This is not the herbal antibiotic that you can take as tincture and expect that to get all the way through your blood system and , and get to wherever you need an antibiotic. The same way that a pill does that a pharmaceutical antibiotic does is strongly antibiotic topically. Right. So on your skin and line , the lining of your digestive tract,

Speaker 3: 1:17:55

Especially the mouth mm-hmm <affirmative>. Esophagus stomach. Yeah . Yep . Yeah . All right . So we've been talking in some generalities. We've could have given a few particular examples, but we wanted to kind of go through some categories of bidders to emphasize again that it's not that there is bidders and they're all there together. And it doesn't matter. Just get any one of them and, and that'll be great, but that we can be more selective about them .

Speaker 2: 1:18:24

I mean, get any one of them and that'll be better than no bidders .

Speaker 3: 1:18:27

Fair enough. Yes.

Speaker 2: 1:18:28

Yeah . Yeah . But we can do so much better than that. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:18:32

So we have some categories here and we'll give some examples of each and, you know, talk about the exciting stuff about them that comes to mind. Um, I wanna say that these, this is not a , um, rigorously , uh, schematized set of categories , um, <laugh> , but I think that these are,

Speaker 2: 1:18:50

It's not an alphabetical order, is what he's saying, <laugh>. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:18:53

But I think these are, I think these are helpful and , uh, let's start with pure bitters, right? These, this is what I call plants, where you taste them and they just taste bitter. And there's not like a hint of aromatics in, there's not , there's

Speaker 2: 1:19:06

Like nothing else

Speaker 3: 1:19:06

Going on there . Some ency going on, or a sour note or whatever else. They're just straight up bitter, very straightforward, very clear. And so for me, Centura is my favorite. It was the first, not the first her I really worked with, but the first her I studied as, as herbal school.

Speaker 2: 1:19:21

Yeah. It was your first herb of the month.

Speaker 3: 1:19:23

Herb of the month. Yep . Yeah . Um, and it made a huge impression on me. 'cause that was a time when I was doing some initial work to repair my digestion and change my diets. <laugh>, <laugh> , um,

Speaker 2: 1:19:35

And oh boy, <laugh>.

Speaker 3: 1:19:36

Yeah. I mean, I was, you know, I was powered on Triscuits and Cheddar , uh, until I met Katya <laugh> <laugh> and , um, you know, anyway , uh, so when I took a month and I drank , uh, a quart of Centura et tea every day , um,

Speaker 2: 1:19:50

All by itself too, he really did it. Y'all, if you've ever tried to drink an entire quart of sari, it is an experience. And he did it every day . The whole thing.

Speaker 3: 1:19:59

Take a little sip every now and then through the day, don't give up, you'll get there

Speaker 2: 1:20:03

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 1:20:04

Um, but it made a huge impact on, on my stomach, on my digestion, and then as a result on my mood <laugh> and , uh, uh, a bunch of other things as well. So yeah , I feel really attached to that plant. Um, and , uh, it's a favorite. And the other thing I like about it is that it's not threatened in the wild and gentian root , um, especially yellow gentian and white gentian , those are quite seriously threatened in their, their natural , uh, environments. They're, they're often cultivated as well. And if you're gonna buy products made from these herbs, get them organically cultivated mm-hmm <affirmative> . Cultivated because, you know, they weren't wild harvested organic because they were tracked and you are sure they weren't wild harvested or grown in weird ways or, or whatever else. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a couple of pure bitter plants. Uh , and by the way, there are others, but we're just giving a couple examples for each time .

Speaker 2: 1:20:58

Yeah . I mean , we could toss bitter bit , um, blessed thistle into this group and stuff like that, but like Yeah . When we say pure bitter, I, I think also a thing to say here is that these are cold plants mm-hmm <affirmative> . And when you taste them , it tastes cold. Yeah. Even if it's warm,

Speaker 3: 1:21:17

It's really true.

Speaker 2: 1:21:18

Like you really feel there's something cold about it.

Speaker 3: 1:21:25

They, they, they have what we call a refrigerant effect , which is essentially to like dial down the thermostat in your body mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and cool you off.

Speaker 2: 1:21:34

It's like how, it's like how a cucumber it's cooling, even if it was at room temperature. Yeah. It's, or like a watermelon. And the thing is that when you eat watermelon or a cucumber, you might think that's happening because of the water aspect. Mm . But it's, it's actually not there . Even if you like dehydrated it, that would be very weird. Uh, it would still have that cooling aspect. And that is the same kind of thing. It's not exactly the same chemistry Right. That you are getting from these pure bidders.

Speaker 3: 1:22:05

If you work with pure bidders like that, that's the place where you need to be more cautious about the constitution of the person you recommend them to. You can have somebody and they have some indigestion and, and some bloating and so on, and you're like, all right , any bidder is gonna just move stuff along in your, in your GI tract and that's gonna be great. Um, and if you give them these pure bidders, that will happen. Right. The digestive issues will , will be relieved. But if they already had cold hands and feet and they shivered a lot and they always were wearing scarves and that kind of thing, you could push them even colder. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or you could take a neutral body and make it cold. Um, if they were to work with these plants in isolation mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . It's easy to formulate around this problem, <laugh>. Right . Right . It's easy to say, well, you're a cold person. I really wanna give you <inaudible> though 'cause of this, you know, I wanna get that schematic effect. I wanna like build you an iron stomach <laugh> . Right . <laugh> . So I'm just gonna mix your centi 50 50 with Ginger and that's the thing you're gonna take before your meals and, and , and so on.

Speaker 2: 1:23:02

I think actually you're even a great example of that because at the time that you did Barbara the month with au you had a lot of extra fluid just because of what you'd been eating. But if you were to do straight AU for a month now, that would be extremely, I don't think you would make it through the month. Yeah. Because in general, you do tend towards, well, not tend towards dry, you are solidly dry.

Speaker 3: 1:23:27

I've also, I've also really changed my workout habits. 'cause at that time I was doing kind of high intensity exercise every night. Yeah. Um, close to bedtime for hours ,

Speaker 2: 1:23:35

For hours and hours close

Speaker 3: 1:23:36

To bedtime. And so I , I did have more heat in my, in my makeup at the time. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Now my heat's a little more like spread out through the week <laugh>. Yeah. Um, so Yeah, that's

Speaker 2: 1:23:45

True. Yeah. So that's true . Like at that time. So like, even though

Speaker 3: 1:23:49

If I took it now, it'd be like centor with fennel. Yes. Yeah .

Speaker 2: 1:23:52

Yes, yes, yes. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, but, and possibly a little ginger in there too, but , um, but yeah, so, so thinking about like, even though RINs constitution is dry and cold and always has been, at that time, a drying cooling herb actually made sense because there was too much extra fluid from food sensitivities going on and a lot of extra heat because of really over training actually. Yeah , it was , yeah .

Speaker 3: 1:24:25

Yeah. You could tell it because I kept spraining my ankles.

Speaker 2: 1:24:28

<laugh> <laugh> . Uh, yeah. So , um, so, so just recognizing that we don't always say, oh , that's a cold, dry person. We're never working with Centara at all. Um, well, okay, we can formulate, but even sometimes a cold dry person is out of their cold dryness, and so that might be appropriate. That's

Speaker 3: 1:24:51

That current state idea. Yeah . We can bring forward. Yeah. Right. So those are, those are bitters where , uh, you want to exemplify to somebody. What does bitter taste like? Let me give you my blessed thistle torture .

Speaker 2: 1:25:04

All of the bitter, you'll know. Right. This is just a bottle of bitter. There's nothing else in here. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:25:09

But in , in contrast, I think it's worth talking about mild bitters, you know, talking about bitter plants that are not super intense mm-hmm <affirmative> . And for me, chama mile comes to mind first. That is a complex plant. It has a lot of aromatics to it, a touch of sweetness, but the amount of bitter in chama mile is mild. Right.

Speaker 2: 1:25:27

But real, it's mild but real. Yeah . It's not like, oh, I don't know . Like there's only a tiny bit in here. No, there's a legitimate amount of bitter, it's just not super, super unpleasant or

Speaker 3: 1:25:40

Intense. It's , it's easier to taste in a tincture. Yeah . And it's, and it's much easier to taste in a long infusion tea than a short infusion one. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . When people take a tea bag of chama mile and steep at five minutes, then they mainly get like a sweet aromatic floral kind of a beverage. Right. When you take a lot of chamomile and brew it strong and brew it covered and let it steep for 30 or 40 minutes, then you taste it and the bitter is unmistakable. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . This is also much more effective for digestive or menstrual cramps or a lot of other <laugh> Yeah . Things that we turn to camera about . Yeah . You

Speaker 2: 1:26:12

Really do need, do you need it that strong? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:26:14

Right. Um, but it is a , a really nice herb to introduce that, that bitterness to people. Um, and you can do it gradually. You can be like, okay, today you're gonna steep your chamomile tea for seven minutes and tomorrow or two days from now it's gonna be eight minutes <laugh> , and you're gonna gradually increase the amount of bitter you experienced through through Cham infusions. Yeah , sure. There's a couple other mild bitters I think worth mentioning. Um, and I'm gonna mention beany statues of fish analysis , I mean, and also skullcap mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , and those two herbs are probably you like holding hands in your mind, I hope <laugh> <laugh> because they are , aren't they ? Aren't they really nice relaxant ings ? Aren't they very good herbs for people who are like, calm and anxious and have like a restless mind?

Speaker 2: 1:26:59

No, not calm. Who They're anxious but they're not calm.

Speaker 3: 1:27:02

They're not calm. They're, yeah. Why did I, okay,

Speaker 2: 1:27:05

<laugh>, you want them to be calm. You want them to be calm. You want that for them. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:27:09

Uh , the Beny was already working on me. <laugh> . Yeah . Um, and we like to point out the bitter element in many of our most effective INE plants. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . We, we like to draw that connection to that embodying that presencing activity of bitters. Um, whether we phrase that as like taking you into the moment or bringing you out of your worries and your, and your regrets and so on, or

Speaker 2: 1:27:38

Getting you out of your head and into your body. Right?

Speaker 3: 1:27:42

Yeah . Parasympathetic activity again. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Rest and digest activity again. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right .

Speaker 2: 1:27:46

Grounding is another word you might say there. Like that all of this is that, that like move movement downward mm-hmm <affirmative> . And it's driven by, by that bitter aspect. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:28:03

So again, mild bitters can be really, really helpful and especially if you think of it not as like a one time solution. Right. But, and that's how these herbs work best. Right. Nervines , many categories of herbs work best when you take them consistently. Right. Uh, but yeah, reaching through digestion into emotion Yeah. That's, that's something that these plants can really do well. Mm-hmm . All right . And then there's aromatic bitters and Yeah. Kaile goes into this group. Um, and aromatic is one of those like flavor slash scent words that is very open-ended <laugh>. Right. And we could give every one of them more , uh, adjectives , uh, alongside. Right.

Speaker 2: 1:28:43

Right. You could, you could think of the word aromatic is completely agnostic. Yeah . Like, if it smells, it doesn't matter what it smells like, if you can smell it, it's aromatic mm-hmm <affirmative> . If it has also that flavor of smell like mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . You know, like if you're thinking about oregano, the flavor of oregano and the smell of a , like, it's, you can't really divide them, but there are things like auie , it doesn't really have a smell, but the flavor is super present. Right. So like aromatic is anything that has that smell and the smell is often also an integral part of the flavor itself.

Speaker 3: 1:29:26

Yeah. So aromatic bitters include chamomile , but also sage and citrus peels, coffee , cacao, <laugh> . Right. Um, and , uh, with these, the thing to keep in mind is that while you're layer layering on the bitter effects and the aromatic effects, and these two go together really nicely, right? Yeah. Because aromatic effects , um, if we just stay with the two kind of major systems we've been looking at today, digestive and nervous aromatics also operate on both of those mm-hmm <affirmative> . Every single time you work with them mm-hmm <affirmative> . Right . Generally they're either like stimulating or releasing tension in the digestive system. Um, and actually same kind of thing in the nervous system, <laugh> , right. Stimulating and releasing tension, moving things around, stirring things up , uh, releasing like barriers that are holding things stuck in place. Um, and , uh, it's very frequently the case that getting both the aromatic and the bitter influence together is really valuable. And these herbs let you do that in one shot. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . You don't , you don't really need to formulate to make it happen. Yeah . That's handy .

Speaker 2: 1:30:33

And like my brain is just sitting here, just popcorn, I don't know, listing off like, oh, but what about that one? What about that one? Like Yeah , there's many more herbs in these categories. We just wanna have a couple here for you to like, get the idea of the flavor, get the idea of the action.

Speaker 3: 1:30:50

Yeah. Kind of a subset of aromatic would be floral <laugh>. Right. <laugh> . Uh , and then I'm thinking about like rose and lavender, especially because these are ones where sometimes people make a cup of tea out of them, and then they make a little frown <laugh> a little devastated face , uh, because they smelled it and it was Oh , rose lavender. Yes. Ah , and then they sip it and they're like, what happened?

Speaker 2: 1:31:16

<laugh>,

Speaker 3: 1:31:18

Why, why is this bitter? What

Speaker 2: 1:31:20

It is so bitter? What

Speaker 3: 1:31:21

Have I done? You know , what have I done

Speaker 2: 1:31:22

<laugh> . Yeah. And even, what did I do wrong? Like, somehow it was your fault. No, no, no. These plants are bitter. They're bitter. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . And then that's not bad.

Speaker 3: 1:31:32

No. I kind of like that. Actually with rose in particular, it's, it's not the same thing as the thorns on the rose , but it's a different way of rose being like, I'm not what your hallmark cards have pretended I was

Speaker 2: 1:31:46

Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:31:48

So I, I appreciate that quite a lot. Okay. Uh, listen, some of the, some of the, like most fundamental bitters in western herbalism are the ones that are roots. Uh, and we, we, I myself anyway, think of these sometimes as the inulin plants, and that's a little reductive and I apologize to the plants. Right. But I'm talking about dandelion, burdock , chicory yellow dock . The reason I get to it through inulin is because that's adding onto the bitter element in those herbs. A very important set of digestive actions, right? Inulin, if you're not familiar, is a prebiotic fiber. It is the favorite food of some of your favorite gut flora. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . The ones that are best to you, the ones that help you the most. <laugh> , right ? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and so with these plants, dandelion, burdock , chicory yellow dock , they have bitter that's doing all these digestive actions we've discussed so far today. And they add on this inulin element of feeding your friends, which is gonna chase away your enemies. <laugh>. Right . <laugh> . Um, and this is a super critical thing. Whenever we're trying to adjust gut flora, you can't adjust gut flora just by taking probiotic capsules. It won't work. It , even if it works while you're taking the course of them, it won't last.

Speaker 2: 1:33:12

It won't last. Right. Right.

Speaker 3: 1:33:14

They're transient, they move through you in order to get them to stick. You've gotta feed 'em <laugh>, <laugh> , uh, it's like the birds coming through your, your yard. If you want them to hang around, you have to put food out. And you can't just do it once. You

Speaker 2: 1:33:27

Gotta keep

Speaker 3: 1:33:27

Doing it. You gotta do it every day . Yep . Yeah . Yep .

Speaker 2: 1:33:30

Uh, two things here. We need to add Ella campaign to this list.

Speaker 3: 1:33:34

Thank you. 'cause it's Ula.

Speaker 2: 1:33:35

It's Ula. Yeah . It's

Speaker 3: 1:33:36

Where the inulin came from, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:33:38

And , um, but it is a much more complex flavor than the rest of the herbs listed there. Um, okay. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is that if you're like, oh, that's fantastic, then I'm just gonna take this dandelion tincture that I bought , um, and it's like crystal clear and I can see through it and I'm getting the bitter and I'm getting inulin and this is gonna be great. No, you're not. So just because dandelion has inulin in it doesn't mean that you are getting any of it unless you actually are getting it. So if you're taking a clarified tincture, you , there's no inulin in there. Inulin is cloudy and white and , uh, and not soluble. So if you can't see it, it's not there. And even if you take it in a tincture, you're getting such a tiny amount of it. Right. So if you want the inulin, you need to eat the roots. Yeah. Like really eat them , um, or put them like in the broth, and then do not strain the broth. You gotta eat that like gritty, powdery stuff at the bottom. And it's also not in the leaves. Yeah . So if you are taking the leaves and you're like, Ooh , not just kidney health, but also inland, like it's in the roots.

Speaker 3: 1:34:59

Yeah. So if you make a decoction and it gets cloudy mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or some people say milky. Right. But I like cloudy better. Um, then that has inulin content and that'll feed it to your system too. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But really the best way is to eat 'em. And maybe murdock's the easiest one. 'cause you can often find it on a grocery store. Yeah . <laugh>. Yeah . And it's a little easier to chew than the others. Yeah. But ,

Speaker 2: 1:35:19

Um, yeah. And it, like, it has a little milder flavor.

Speaker 3: 1:35:22

Yeah. I mean, there's food items that have a lot of inulin content. The , uh, the sunchoke or some, some people call it Jerusalem artichoke. Um, that's a , a food item with a ton of inulin content to it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> .

Speaker 2: 1:35:33

Yeah . But you feel it too, when you eat those, like, you , you feel, think about the feeding frenzy in your guts. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:35:41

Thing about those is they have, they don't have much bitter taste to them, you know, especially the ones that have been cultivated for longer. Right ?

Speaker 2: 1:35:48

Yes . Right .

Speaker 3: 1:35:49

Like we were saying before. Um, and so they, they won't, they're not exactly the same as getting your dandelion decoctions or eating your burdock root mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , snacks or, or things like that. Yeah. Yeah . That's real. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:36:03

Yeah. And just like, just remember inulin is a really good like poster herb for that concept because people often are like, oh, well, I took my this or I took my that and it's got this action. Well, it might have that action in theory it has that action, but it's not necessarily gonna have that action in every extraction method, and it's not necessarily gonna have that action in every location of the body. So you gotta know that what you want from the plant is present in the way you are consuming the plant.

Speaker 3: 1:36:40

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. And it's also worth noting and , and emphasizing again that inin is not the only thing in these plants. Right . And when we take , uh, them as food or when we take a decoction of them or things like that, then we're getting more than just the inulin. And I think that matters, especially because , um, inulin is added as a, as a ingredient to a lot of processed foods. And there have been some studies that have looked at processed foods or isolated inulin as some kind of a supplement having occasional negative effects on the system. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and when we looked at those studies, we were like, okay, that's interesting, but it doesn't scare me away from dandelion and it doesn't scare me away from Burdoch or things like that. Uh, because inulin is a hyper processed food object ingredient is probably not equivalent to inulin as a constituent of the herbs we work with. Right. Um, this is just a story we've seen turn out over and over again with a lot of different constituents in plants mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . So that's what we expect there.

Speaker 2: 1:37:42

Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:37:43

Kind of similar to , uh, ragin , you know, from like , uh, like Irish Moss and other seaweeds.

Speaker 2: 1:37:48

Yeah . Some people have a lot of sensitivity to that because you can't take something and like isolate it and concentrate it and then put that isolated concentrated thing into some food. It's not the same as the original thing that it was in, it's in like such a high proportion , um, that you would not normally be exposed to naturally. Right. So like, if you wanted to eat that much inulin as what they put into these snack foods or whatever, you wouldn't , you would need to eat a whole pile of Jerusalem artichokes and you would stop because you would be like, I'm really full of these things. I'm not going to eat anymore of this. But you don't have that option when it's a snack food that's like, Hey, we're high in fiber, we've got inulin. Yeah. And, and you're getting like a super unnatural quantity of inulin just so that they can write fiber on the label. Yeah. Or because inulin is trendy right now, and they can put that on the label. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:38:50

I think the biggest offenders here are situations where they're adding these ingredients inulin or, or keraginin or whatever to liquids. Mm . You know , like as thickeners to like an alt alternative nut milk substance or something like that mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or like a creamer. I think those are the ones where they tend to bother people the most. Yeah. Um, and , uh, it's really just like, it's flooding you. There's not other like fiber and like

Speaker 2: 1:39:13

Solid matter,

Speaker 3: 1:39:14

It's one to distribute it with,

Speaker 2: 1:39:16

You know ? Right, right, right. Yeah . It's just coming

Speaker 3: 1:39:17

Like

Speaker 2: 1:39:17

That. Yes .

Speaker 3: 1:39:20

All right . There's at least a couple of plants that I, whenever I think of them, I'm always right on that line between , um, really between like your liver and your nerves or more broadly like digestion and emotion. Um, and the two I'm thinking of here are Yarro and St . John's Wart . Um, and if you taste them, taste them side by side , they have a, a really similar degree of bitterness to them , um, in terms of your liver. They have , uh, a , a similar degree of activation, but the nice thing about yaro is that it doesn't have that specific effect, which St . John's Wort has on those specific enzymes in the liver that are responsible for a lot of drug metabolism. So St . John's work can interact, or better said, alter the way your body metabolizes a lot of pharmaceuticals because it upregulates the production of a particular enzyme that that does a lot of that work. Um, and so because of that, there's many, many situations where someone is taking this drug or that drug or six drugs, and we don't wanna give them any St . John's word mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh, but we do still wanna give them a liver remedy. We do still wanna give them a bitter herb. We do still want to give them, and this is where I especially come to yaro , something that has that gut brain intersection, <laugh>. Yeah. And I feel like yaro is the best , uh, next choice , uh, when St . John's word is off the table for that reason.

Speaker 2: 1:40:51

Yeah. I would also, I might also put chamomile in that category.

Speaker 3: 1:41:01

Hmm .

Speaker 2: 1:41:02

Uh , I , I would prefer yaro , but I might put chail for somebody who found Yaro too bitter, and it wasn't, they weren't able to do it. Hmm . Um , because it doesn't matter how great an herb is if a person can't stomach it. Like if they can't, if they can't handle the flavor of it, and it's just, they're just never gonna take it, then it's not gonna do anything for them. And so I don't wanna, I don't wanna say that chamomile is exactly like Yaro , but, but because, because both Yao and St . John's work are moving further down the bitter spectrum mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and becoming more intensely bitter. Mm . I, I still find both of those quite pleasant. But I think that not, not every past me did , um, <laugh> so and so , uh, for that, for the person. I , I think it's worth putting canal in that.

Speaker 3: 1:41:58

Yeah. And you know, maybe not for everybody, but certainly for you, golden rod can be here as well. Yes. Um, golden rod for you is for when you've got too much water on the brain,

Speaker 2: 1:42:09

<laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . Yeah. Which usually also is too much water in the trunk too.

Speaker 3: 1:42:15

The golden rod and Yaro together, they, they have this quality of aromatic to them. Golden rod leans a little more toward the floral side, but Yaro is in this group where I just can't get away from their airy. They're , they're the air elements.

Speaker 2: 1:42:31

They really are , they really are

Speaker 3: 1:42:32

In an aromatic terpenoid blend. Like it's,

Speaker 2: 1:42:36

And if you wanna really push that, grow your own yaro Yeah . And harvest the flowers. When you purchase Yaro , it's mostly leaf and stem. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . There's like a little flower content in there, but it's mostly leaf and stem. You really wanna push this, you get only flowers. And it is a totally different experience. Um, and especially if you don't love the flavor of yaro , I think if you try just the flowers, you will be really surpri surprised because then you get so much more of the aromatic aspect . You might be really surprised at how the flavor changes for you. Yeah . Um , and even like yaro and golden rod together. In fact, when we're done with this episode, that's the tea I'm making. Mm-hmm . Um , yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. Just those two, just the flowers in both cases, just like you can work with the leaves, you can work with it is very effective. There's something amazing about the flowers of those two, blending them together like a Yeah. Just so good. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:43:39

A a a breath of clean air

Speaker 2: 1:43:41

<laugh>. Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 3: 1:43:44

All right . Well, if we wanna go in a more earthy direction , uh, there's some fungal bitters that are worth knowing and, and experimenting with. Uh, REI in particular is a very interesting flavor, complex <laugh>. It has , it has an aromatic element to it, which is not the same as but close to what's going on with coffee. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, chaga is closer to coffee , uh, in that regard and in the type of earth flavor it has, do

Speaker 2: 1:44:09

You think? So I would go the other direction. I would say REI is closer. Hmm . I think that Chaga is Okay. Well , okay .

Speaker 3: 1:44:15

Wait, wait. Here we go. Chaga is closer to coffee on the bitter earthy side. Reishi is closer to coffee on the aromatic side

Speaker 2: 1:44:23

Maybe, but I think that Chaga tastes better <laugh> than coffee does Well , and it def and it tastes better than REI does, even though I have come to really appreciate the flavor of Reishi. But still, and then of course, we always just need to say like, chaga is super trendy and it's not sustainable. Hmm . So, so please just recognize that , um, nobody actually , I know there , all the marketing is telling you that Chaga will solve everything and make you rich and happy and like all the whatever. Really nobody needs Chaga. Like, there's nothing that Chaga could do for you that you could not get in other ways that are more sustainable.

Speaker 3: 1:45:06

We're worried about over harvesting. You know, it's,

Speaker 2: 1:45:08

It , it's been happening, it's been happening now for a long time. So if you can't get guaranteed sustainable chaga , um, then don't, just don't. Um, and so if you live in a more rural area,

Speaker 3: 1:45:23

You live in a birch forest <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 1:45:25

Yeah. Then one, one way to , to have it sustainably it still isn't sustainable, but is make friends with all the laggers around and 'cause they will cut down trees and they know what chaga is. Don't let them use their chainsaw to take it off like <laugh> have a clean axe that you only are a hatchet that you only use for this purpose so that you know it's clean and it's not got like bar oil in it and all that kind of stuff. 'cause you don't want that on the Chaga. Um, but, but in that case, that Chaga was going to die anyway because they cut down the tree. Now cutting down the trees is not necessarily sustainable. Um, but okay. Like whatever , um, the , there's some complexity there, <laugh> , but regardless it happened. And so that's the chaga to work with. Hmm . But not, not all and not most chaga on the market is that kind of situation. So just, I I feel like we just can't ever say the word chaga without saying you don't actually need it. Yeah. Um,

Speaker 3: 1:46:28

But, but what, what is worth saying though, about both Reishi and Chaga is that if you wanted a bitter and an adaptogen and an immunomodulator, well, you only need one herb. <laugh> . Yeah .

Speaker 2: 1:46:41

<laugh> . Yeah . Yeah ,

Speaker 3: 1:46:42

Yeah , yeah . Like , those are some powerful multifactorial categories of herbal activity, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . And here we have three of them layered into, into a single fungus. Yeah. So no wonder it is, you know, reishi, the, the , uh, the mushroom of immortality <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 1:46:57

Yes. And, and Reishi Really, it's the one to go to. 'cause you can cultivate reishi. It's, it's perfectly happy to do that. Yeah. And it doesn't like lose its awesomeness , um, for that reason. But you can't, you can't cultivate chaga, so mm-hmm <affirmative> .

Speaker 3: 1:47:10

Yeah. There, there's tons of debate about whether , um, all ganoderma species qualify to be referred to as reishi. Um, I'm mostly in the camp that says they're not identical, but they're all within the same ballpark. And so if you have like, ganoderma aplin atom or whatever where you live, go for it. Don't , don't feel, oh, I'm getting third best rei. Eh , it's great

Speaker 2: 1:47:35

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 1:47:37

It loves you. You should love it. Yeah. All right . Uh, so that's one way to influence immunity, right. Is through immunomodulatory effects of fungi. Uh, like those friends, there's other ways to influence immunity, and sometimes they come in a bitter package, like when we get bone set mm-hmm <affirmative> . Or calendula. Now calendula isn't the most bitter one around , uh, it's more clear in a good strong tincture, especially a high proof tincture. I know you don't love them .

Speaker 2: 1:48:03

No, but well, with ULA you do kind of need it. I , it's true. I hate a high proof alcohol tincture. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But calendula Hass got that resin, and in order to get the resin, you really do need to bump up the alcohol percentage. Um, but I will say that, you know, calendula is, if we're , if we're comparing choline and bone set regarding the bitter calendula is like a 10th as bitter as bone set , bone set is really,

Speaker 3: 1:48:31

It's a , it's a strong bitter.

Speaker 2: 1:48:32

Astoundingly bitter. Yeah . Astoundingly bitter. Yeah . But man, I just do not like the flavor of the way that calendula is bitter. It's just so unappealing to me, which okay. You formulate around that, it's fine. Yeah . Um, and I , it's funny to me that, that the bone set is actually less offensive <laugh> <laugh> , even though you know That's true. That's true.

Speaker 3: 1:48:56

Um, and listener , remember, you might feel differently. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:48:59

Yes, yes, yes. I think this is maybe unusual. I think this is one of those places where I'm extra weird. Hmm . Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:49:06

But, you know, both bone set and calendula, they're, we can call them immune stimulants, we can call them lymphatics because they do help to circulate that, that particular type of fluid in your body. And that's critically important for good immune function and surveillance and clearance, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, so super helpful there. Uh ,

Speaker 2: 1:49:25

Hold on. Immune stimulants

Speaker 3: 1:49:29

Bone set for sure. Calendula stimulant is maybe not the right word unless you allow your definition of stimulant to just include like we've imp improved eff efficiency.

Speaker 2: 1:49:41

I almost feel that we have a bone set though too. Like Yeah . If I think about stimulant , I'm thinking more about like echinacea, although even there we have a little problem. Mm-hmm . But bone set , I think so much more about bone marrow and about immune cell production. Mm-hmm . Which, okay, that is stimulating because we are stimulating the production of more cells. But I don't think of that in exactly the same way as we usually think of something that we call an immune stimulant and

Speaker 3: 1:50:17

I , which is often just reduced to, it makes more white blood cells happen, or

Speaker 2: 1:50:20

Like it makes more inflammatory process. Like because, because actually even to say immune stimulant is so much more complicated than, or complex than what it sounds like. But when you say immune stimulant, then the next thing that you almost are thinking is, do I have to worry about a cytokine storm? And I don't like, so I, I would never think about that with bone set .

Speaker 3: 1:50:43

I mean, most herbal immune stimulants aren't like monotonic. They're not only doing one thing in one direction forever. Yeah. Um, so, so it's

Speaker 2: 1:50:52

A , I'm with you. It definitely is stimulating, but it is not the kind of stimulating that makes me say, oh, I have an autoimmune disorder. I can't work with that .

Speaker 3: 1:51:01

Yeah . Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:51:02

I think that's, that's really what I, the little thread. I want hair, I wanted to split <laugh> whatever . <laugh> .

Speaker 3: 1:51:08

Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know , uh, a nerve that's a , I guess it's got some touch to the calendula. Um, but, you know , looking for a bitter , looking for one with immune relevance here. Uh, and I think of merh because merh , it's a resonance flavor. It's not, it's different from other types of bitter tastes. Uh, well, 'cause the chemistry's different.

Speaker 2: 1:51:32

Yeah . I mean, because there's also heat inherent Yeah,

Speaker 3: 1:51:34

That's true.

Speaker 2: 1:51:34

Just because of the resin. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But there's heat inherent in Angelica, there's heat inherent in Calamus .

Speaker 3: 1:51:40

Yeah. And Mers , it's not

Speaker 2: 1:51:42

Like a disqualifier.

Speaker 3: 1:51:43

Right. And mer mer is, I think, interesting because you can taste the bitterness in it, but it's also not anybody's , uh, it's not on anybody's list of bitter digestive herbs, you know, <laugh>

Speaker 2: 1:51:55

Well, it is not like it is famously like, not so easy to get. I mean, okay. You can just order it at mountain, those herbs, but, but you know, it's , um, special. It's special. Yeah. It's ,

Speaker 3: 1:52:06

Yeah . Yeah. But good stuff. Yeah. Okay. We've got some bitters that will put you to sleep. And , uh, for me that's wild lettuce and hops,

Speaker 2: 1:52:17

You know, many bitters will help you to sleep. It's true. Because of , um, all the great things they can do. And some of them also have relaxing action. Right. But it , most importantly, I guess the most direct mechanism of action there would be shifting into that parasympathetic state. Right . Okay. That's not the same as wild lettuce and hops, which will make you sleep. Yeah. Right. Like there's a , there's a difference there. There's, there's allow you to sleep versus command you to sleep . Put , put you to sleep . To sleep , sleep . Yeah . Yeah .

Speaker 3: 1:52:50

It's , it's real. Yeah. Yeah. So they have, they have , um, like some of their chemistry is so sedative to the nerves and to the brain that we put it in the category of being hypnotic. Uh, which is to say even if you were well rested and in the middle of your day, you take a significant dose, a a big enough dose of these, and you'll need a nap soon. You

Speaker 2: 1:53:09

Feel tired? Yeah. Yeah . Right .

Speaker 3: 1:53:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:53:13

Both cold.

Speaker 3: 1:53:14

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 2: 1:53:16

Trying to think of a non , which goes right . Exotic herb that isn't cold.

Speaker 3: 1:53:20

Yeah. I don't know . I don't , that'd be a tricky one. Right? Because the ,

Speaker 2: 1:53:25

Yeah. I

Speaker 3: 1:53:25

Think they're , the cold there is slowing down, sedating, turning down the dial of activity. Yeah . And that includes alertness in a sense, not just like metabolic movement.

Speaker 2: 1:53:36

Yeah. I'm pretty , yeah. I think it's, it's always gonna be the cold aspect there. Yeah .

Speaker 3: 1:53:41

Yeah. Um, those ones too, we don't, we don't often take them , uh, as, as bitters, like straight up, because they could make you sleepy and we want you to take your bitters with all of your meals, but sometimes you could say, all right , well , uh, if you can handle having more than one bitter blend, you can have your daytime and your evening time. Yeah . You can take , uh, some hops and wild lettuce and some friends , uh, before dinner, or if you're gonna have a a after dinner snack, then definitely get you some bitters with that too. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. These would make sense there.

Speaker 2: 1:54:12

Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:54:14

There's a couple of , um, like constituent based categories I wanna mention, and you probably won't be surprised that one of them is the berberine herbs <laugh> . Right . We've touched on a couple of these as we go along, but remember, berberine and related, like very similar bitter alkaloids are to be found in Golden Seal, gold thread, Oregon grape yellow root Agarita , um, the emer cork tree. There's others. I feel like I'm leaving somebody big out, but you can let me know later on. Oh ,

Speaker 2: 1:54:48

Um, uh, Barberry. Yep .

Speaker 3: 1:54:51

That's the one . Thank you for that. Yeah. Barberry. Yeah. Yeah. Um , so the fact that they contain the berberine , uh, is partly , uh, well, for some of them it's due to a , a family relation. Right. Um, a lot of them are in a , a similar plant family or, or a grouping like that. Um, but not all of them. Uh, but the, the production of the berberine, the yellow color to the tissues that are most saturated with it, that particular flavor of berberine, where it's not just bitter to me, it always comes across with a metallic tinge. Um,

Speaker 2: 1:55:29

There's something, there's something super specific about that flavor. Yeah . It is the berberine flavor. Yeah , it is. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:55:35

It's worth learning in your mouth, in your senses. And the way to do that is to get as many of these as you can and line them up next to each other. Taste your golden seal, taste your barberry, taste, your Oregon grape root . And they are different from each other. They're not exactly the same flavor. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But there's a consistency and it's the berberine, and you can start to identify it , um, and be able to recognize it in the future. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:56:02

It's worth noting there, that golden seal and gold thread in this list are at risk. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, or endangered, depending on what state you're in. Yeah. Um, so, you know, but barberry is really abundant.

Speaker 3: 1:56:17

Yeah. Where we are. Japanese barberry considered invasive. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um,

Speaker 2: 1:56:21

So yeah, like choose your berberine plants wisely mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and, and depend on your other bidders. Like we just, berberine is so trendy right now, but it doesn't, it , it doesn't have to be berberine. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:56:35

I mean, remember that for the, the old school antimicrobial effects <laugh> of berberine and , and its plants. Uh, and for the, the new rounds of blood sugar regulating effects that for these plants themselves, it's never been only the berberine. Right . And it's , uh, it's, it's not that still when it comes to the blood sugar impacts. So , um, like we said before, choose your herbs for people based on the totality of that person and their needs and their symptoms or conditions or whatever. Um, not just on this herb has this chemistry in it, right? Yeah . Get , get , get broader than that. It'll be more helpful to the, to everybody really. Yeah. Yeah. But they're cool plants. Uh, they're very potent and really good to have a blend. Remember, it's better to have a blend , uh, in, in a first aid kit or , or a go bagg or something like that. Yep . Uh, and then kind of similar artes in containing plants. Right. So we also mentioned these earlier , but that's mug war , wormwood, sweet Annie and other artemesia species , uh, contain artemisinin gives them a bunch of their bitterness. Also famously very potent antimicrobial, including against , um, the , uh, the malaria

Speaker 2: 1:57:46

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 1:57:48

The malaria, yeah .

Speaker 2: 1:57:49

The malaria. It falls off the tongue. <laugh>.

Speaker 3: 1:57:53

Yep . Yeah. Uh, these, they are , they are cooling in nature. They, they , uh, they increase in their cooling nature with the potency of their Artemis and in content. So like, mug warts, kind of moderate sweet , Annie a little more. So warm wood , very powerful. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , in both regards mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:58:16

I'm pretty excited about the next three. Yeah. Really waiting for them . Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:58:19

This is <laugh> , right? This is 'cause we get to energetics, right? So like we said earlier, it , there's not universals with bitters because the plants are complex. They have many chemistries. They have, they have mixed qualities. Right. A lot of the time. Um, but there is that tendency towards bitter plants to be like cooling drying tifying maybe more often than not. So let's look at the reverse of that. Let's look at relaxant bitters. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . <laugh> , right ? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and here the mother word and the vervain stand out to me is like my first thought. If I want a bitter plant, I wanna relax somebody. Those are, those are the ones I'm gonna be reaching for before my brain is fully processed. What I'm doing. <laugh> ,

Speaker 2: 1:58:59

You know, for me it's the vervain and the calamus. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Those two are the two that pop right to my head. Yeah. Mother wart , um, is an amazing plant. But I work with that in pretty specific ways. And blue vervain and calamus, I a little bit more broadly mm-hmm <affirmative>. But also that like, these are certainly not the only ones we could put in this category, but Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:59:22

Yeah. I mean , even, even kamile , beany , skullcap , uh, those have relaxing aspects to

Speaker 2: 1:59:27

Them. Yeah. Passion flower could fit in there . California Poppy could. Sure . Yeah. I mean, it will go a little further towards sedative, but that's fine. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, but the thing here is that when you say the word relaxant, that might get you in a little bit of a pickle, because Calamus also has stimulating action. Mother word has some stimulating action too. And so you might be like, oh , that, I don't know if I can put those, like, how can those both exist? They can, but it might be helpful also to think in terms of anti-spasmodic. Sometimes I like to, like, I find the word relaxant to seem a little passive. Hmm . When I think about it. Hmm . And so that's not necessarily bad. Um, I'm trying to think of an herb that I think of as relaxant. Just relaxant and not like lavender would fall in that category to me. Hmm . Relaxant , but not really antispasmodic. And I, I feel like that antispasmodic part is really important because especially when we're thinking about mother wart blue vein and calamus , but also chamomile would fit here also , um, bey , but that's a little bit more metaphorical, is that it's relaxing specifically something that is spasming. Something that is over tightening or that is white knuckling, or that is stuck in this like, threat space. And to say, oh, it relaxes you out of fight or flight. Well , that's not inaccurate, but it doesn't feel as active to me as these plants actually are. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . These, I feel relaxant feels like it's pleasant. Antispasmodic feels like it's doing the work. Hmm . And, and that might not be true for everybody, but it's, that's how it feels to me that like relaxant is like, Hmm , might be nice to have a little, like a little damiana relax a little bit. But like, calamus is like, I'm kind of freaking out. I can't, like, nothing's working right in my body. I feel nauseous and hungry. I don't even know. I can't think about one thing. At the same time. I can't stop worrying about stuff that I can't control can , whatever. That's when I'm like, ah , I need some calamus right now. I need some blue fur vein right now. Or like , um, I'm having a little bit of a panic attack. It's time for some mother war y you know, like I feel like it's the word stronger . The word stronger . Yeah. The word relaxant is accurate, but it doesn't have the power behind it in our cultural use of the word that I want it to have to describe these plants. Mm-hmm

Speaker 3: 2:02:37

<affirmative> . Yeah . Yeah . Yeah . You could say that these herbs are , uh, they're not mi like their bitterness isn't mixed up with some astringent elements or some tifying elements. Right? Yeah . Like they're , they're devoting that, that activity of releasing tension without it being kind of blended <laugh> , you know, with something else that's squeezing or , or tightening or doing things like this. Um, but it's,

Speaker 2: 2:03:07

It's not mitigated. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:03:09

Yeah . Yeah. Yeah. That's why . So those are very helpful friends. And I mean, honestly, if we think about what plants we find ourselves recommending or suggesting people experiment with most often , uh, the, the bitter relaxant mints , they , they're up there. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . They're very, very helpful for modern humans. Yeah. With all of our stresses and anxieties and tension inducing habits and so on. Yeah . Yeah . So good friends to learn. We also find it super helpful for people to learn warming bitters and to, to be able to, to offer warming bitters and, and , um, share them with our, with our friends and clients. Because remember, like the classic idea bitter includes that coldness , um, that which is both anti-inflammatory effects, but also with a pure bitter, it's just that direct refrigerant quality that the, the plant can have. But

Speaker 2: 2:03:58

Some people's digestion is already so sluggish and so cold Mm . That they can't handle extra cold. Yeah . Like too much gold. They're already, yeah. So they, so in order to fix the digestive issues, yes, they need some, they need some bitter aspects 'cause they're lacking that, but they're also lacking the warming influences in their life of like movement and like activity in different climate, like different temperatures and , and like our indoor and sedentary monoculture , um, which not , you know, some people have more active jobs and whatever, but like most people are indoor and sedentary most of the time. And so here it is , um, these, these problems are due to a lack of the bidders, but also the lack of all the things that you're lacking when you are indoors and sedentary most of the time. Yeah. And so you need, you need some fire to get in there because you're not getting that otherwise.

Speaker 3: 2:04:59

Yeah. Not getting those exposures. Right. So warming bitters, Calamus Angelica ella campaign , and I forget turmeric <laugh> , which I , I often do when I'm thinking of warming warming bitters for some reason. Yeah . Callus , angelica, they come right together. Oh yeah. Ella campaign. But yeah, turmeric don't forget. And that's a good way to differentiate turmeric from ginger, by the way. They're in the same family. They're very closely related. They share a lot of chemistry, but by impression, by, by our senses. There's a big difference between turmeric and ginger. It's that bitter element that makes turmeric more drying than ginger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . It makes turmeric. Uh, I consider it tonifying. Whereas I think of ginger as relaxing.

Speaker 2: 2:05:41

I think that too. Yeah . Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:05:43

Um, so it's a , a significant difference between them and the flavor is an indicator for that , uh, for that going on. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the warming bitters are, are nice because , um, well, they're already formulated <laugh> , right. <laugh> . It's, it's bitter with pungency. Um, and so like we said before, if you have, you know, cent and ginger, that's kind of similar to what Calamus is, but that calamus is its own thing, right. Angelica is, its its own thing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and you might think of these and be like, all right , you know, I have warming bitter. And then I say, all right , I really need an extra brain affinity, callus . I need extra pelvic affinity. Angelica, I need extra digestive , uh, affinity Ella campaign. Okay. Or turmeric. Yeah. Right. <laugh> . Yeah. Um, and that's the way we get from, you know, the, the cloud of every possible herb to, this is the one I want to hand you. Yeah. Right, right. All right . And then last, but by no means least moistening bitters, yes. They do exist. <laugh> . They

Speaker 2: 2:06:44

Do exist

Speaker 3: 2:06:45

<laugh> . Right . Uh, like I said before, the bitter influence has that drying effect because of the movement and the draining of fluids. But some plants can be bitter and also demulcent at the same time. It's allowed, because it's nature, it's biology. Everything that can occur will Yes . <laugh> , you know, including

Speaker 2: 2:07:03

Squares. Yeah . Squares exist in nature.

Speaker 3: 2:07:05

Yeah. So , um, evening primroses is a mild bitter, but it's there, it's a really interesting flavor, especially fresh off the plant. You know, you chew a leaf, you get some pungency, you get some bitterness, you get some demulcent slime going on. Mm-hmm . One of my personal favorites 'cause those three energetic qualities track with my needs really nicely. Yeah. Um , I could just drink , uh, evening primrose tea all day and that would probably, you know, suit me, suit me just fine. <laugh>. Yeah. So that's a , I really love that one. And it has some excellent vinne qualities to it as well, which you might expect based on that description. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:07:41

Yeah. And then Iceland moss. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um,

Speaker 3: 2:07:44

Not a moss. <laugh>

Speaker 2: 2:07:46

<laugh> .

Speaker 3: 2:07:47

It's a , it's a lichen, right? Yeah . It's , uh, yeah. It's , uh, it's weird too though, because I mean, it's weird in many ways. It's weird as a lichen that has demulcent qualities that's not normal. That's right. You don't get that with , uh, that's not typical with , with Nia . No way. <laugh>

Speaker 2: 2:08:01

No. That's like about as drying as you can be. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And, and I gotta say Iceland moss not delicious. Um, definitely not delicious, but super effective. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , and you know, if you put enough ginger in there, anything is delicious. Yeah. Cinnamon, you know,

Speaker 3: 2:08:20

We had that one time somebody made like an Iceland moss pudding gruel thing with like cinnamon and raisins and stuff. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Tolerable.

Speaker 2: 2:08:27

It was Okay. Yeah . Little honey <laugh> . Yeah . Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:08:32

Yeah. So look , look, again, these are just some categories that we, we listed out today, <laugh> , when we sat down to, to write up the plan for this. It's

Speaker 2: 2:08:40

Definitive, it's not exhaustive.

Speaker 3: 2:08:41

Yeah, yeah , yeah . Um, and we want you to be thinking like, oh, I could add this one to that category. Oh, here's another category of bitters , uh, for me to, to put into my schema of the world. Mm . Because that, that's what you need in order to, to pick things and, and be specific and, and be targeted to the, to the needs. Right. Yeah. Alright . So how do you take bids?

Speaker 2: 2:09:06

Right ? We've got all theses now . Let's get 'em into you. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:09:11

So one option is to take 'em straight up. Right. And you can have a tincture , uh, or some other liquid extract of your bitter herbs and take them right on the tongue. Just like that.

Speaker 2: 2:09:23

<laugh> , you

Speaker 3: 2:09:23

Can make bitter tea. Right. Uh, you don't have to be a weirdo who's trying to impress his new herbalist girlfriend, <laugh> , uh, and drinks, you know, course of centor all day. But

Speaker 2: 2:09:33

It was very impressive, y'all <laugh> . It really was very impressive. <laugh>.

Speaker 3: 2:09:38

It worked. But you can , um, you can make tea of a bitter plant. You can, you can drink it. You don't have to take enormous amounts. You could have a tiny teacup before your meals. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . That's totally effective.

Speaker 2: 2:09:49

Yeah. You , uh, you know, it's great to learn the flavors by themselves, but it is better if you will actually do it. Yes . So you always can toss a little ginger in there. You always like putting honey in or some sweetener does not always work. But putting like a strong flavor often does. Whether that is like a strong pungent kind of flavor or a heating kind of flavor, like ginger , um, or a cinnamon. Um,

Speaker 3: 2:10:21

I find like the sweet herbs do a better job than just a straight sweet like sugar. Yeah. Uh, like if you put fennel together with a bitter herb Yeah . It softens it .

Speaker 2: 2:10:30

That's much

Speaker 3: 2:10:30

Better. Significantly.

Speaker 2: 2:10:31

Yeah. Yeah . Or then the other thing is , um, sour, if you put like orange peel in with something , um, or some of the berries in with something that's bitter. Yeah. For example, with reishi , um, by itself, pretty bitter. But if you put it in with like a little bit of caca nibs and a bunch of Hawthorn berries, suddenly it's like, oh, this is actually not bad at all. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 3: 2:10:59

Yeah. Yeah . You can, you can, for some bitter plants in particular, you can just take 'em and chew 'em straight. Uh , calamus is the foremost in my mind for that. Right. You can have little pieces or slices of calice and just chew on them. Excellent way to take it. Um, yeah. Very effective. Yeah . Very good.

Speaker 2: 2:11:17

You could do that with dandelion and burdock too. And um, you know, just eat it afterwards. Just swap . Because then you're getting the bitterness, you're like slowly releasing all of the constituents of the plant. And then when you swallow it, you're also getting all of that fiber, so, yeah . Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:11:35

Nice. You can of course make a digestive bitter formula for yourself. Right. Um, and generally when that happens, you're combining your bitter herb with something carative. 'cause our goal is digestion, right? Yeah. So carminative is like the other major action of herbs in terms of basic digestive support.

Speaker 2: 2:11:54

It takes a lot of heat to break down food. Yeah. Um, which is part of why cooking is actually so awesome because it predigests a lot of your food for you mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and that reduces the amount of heating energy that your body requires to like, you're not starting from zero, is what I'm saying. It's like you're starting with the oven preheated. Yeah. Yeah, yeah . But so that, right. So those carminative herbs are also bringing more heat in, and especially if you run cold and you tend to have sluggish digestion, bringing any extra heat in that you can, is gonna really improve the whole system.

Speaker 3: 2:12:32

Yeah. And then, like you said, you can add other herbs for complimentary flavors, you know, to make it appealing, to make it work well, or just for like, the theme, you know, like, this one here is actually a formula. It's labeled evergreen, not so bitters <laugh>. Uh, 'cause I

Speaker 2: 2:12:48

Think because I thought that blend wasn't really as bitter as it could have been

Speaker 3: 2:12:52

Been. Yeah. The amount of bitter we put in there probably could have been bumped up, but this was like pine and some hemlock and a few other, you know, evergreen , uh, herbs, tinctured in there together with it. But

Speaker 2: 2:13:02

I mean, it is bitter, but it's just so tiny that you don't, it doesn't, it's

Speaker 3: 2:13:06

A balsamic Yes . Uh , flavor. Yes. So, but you can honestly, there's, it's hard to think of a flavor profile or like a , a flavor creation that you couldn't tack a little bitter onto if you wanted to. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um, and the other way to say that is like, the options for making a digestive bitters blend or like a cocktail bitters blend are really broad. Um, and sometimes, sometimes if you see, see a , a preparation or a , or a recipe, and you're like, that's weird, try it because it might be awesome. Yeah .

Speaker 2: 2:13:36

It might be awesome.

Speaker 3: 2:13:37

It still may be weird, but after a while you'll get used to it and be like, this is the best thing ever. <laugh>. Yeah. That's happened to us a bunch of times.

Speaker 2: 2:13:43

<laugh> , I , you know, I think that both digestive bitters and cocktail bitters, which you don't have to put cocktail bitters into alcohol, you can put them into tonic water or just any kind of fizzy water. Yeah . Um, you can put them in juice, they're fun and they're bitter, so that's great. Um, but I like, that's a really fun place to experiment because you can't screw it up as long as the end result tastes bitter, you know, it will work. And formulating can be, I think, a little intimidating, especially for folks who are new to herbalism and new to formulation, because sometimes you think, oh man, I'm gonna make this blend and it's gonna really help. And then you taste it and it is so gross and you're like, I don't, I don't know how to make this taste good. But with digestive bitters or cocktail bitters, if it turns out to not taste good, no problem. Because it's bitter. So it's fine. So like, you, you really can't mess it up. You can make them taste super fun and interesting and even tasty, but if you miss no problem, it's still bitter. It's still gonna work. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:14:55

Yeah. The , the classic approach to something like a cocktail bitter preparation is you get bitter, sour, pungent, and sweet altogether in the same remedy

Speaker 2: 2:15:05

In different proportions. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on, like, by preference, not necessarily. Like, there's a book that will tell you the exact proportions. I mean, you can find a ton of different recipes for cocktail bitters, but

Speaker 3: 2:15:15

Yeah. If you're making a citrus bitters, you're gonna have more sour than anything . Yes . You know ? Exactly . Stuff like that. Right. But, but having, having all of those tastes triggered at the same time, dials down the severity of the bitterness <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , and makes it more, more appealing. Yeah. But look, you can play around with this a lot. You can try bitter herbs infused into wine or vinegar or honey. Sure. Go for it. Like why not? Yeah. Um , you can take these herbs the way you take any of your herbs, <laugh>. Right. Uh, and it is worth, it is worth experimenting with that. Yeah. I , I , we've made little bitter lozenges, like all kinds of stuff. That's good

Speaker 2: 2:15:50

To do. Especially, you know, a lot of times people think, well, you know, because bitters normally, like, the most common way to take bitters these days is a tincture. It's just like the most available thing. Some

Speaker 3: 2:16:03

Of them have spray tops now. Yeah. But it's , that's what it is inside <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 2:16:06

Yeah. It's still, it's still alcohol. Yeah . But a lot of people don't work with alcohol. A lot of people that people have allergies, people are in sobriety, people for religious reasons or just don't, just plain don't like it. It doesn't feel good to them. And there's no need for alcohol to get your bitters. Like Yeah. Make little bitter lozenges, like pestis , whatever, you know? Totally. Yeah. Like you can make so many different things. Bitter. You could make bitter cookies, like why not? Um,

Speaker 3: 2:16:35

Yeah. And don't forget your salads. <laugh>. Yes.

Speaker 2: 2:16:38

Bitter hot cocoa. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Yeah . All different, like, super interesting things that you could do. Um, so don't, don't limit yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:16:51

Uh, if you need more inspiration and , uh, you're a student in our courses or will be soon, just wanna briefly mention that we, we cover bidders many places and many times because as we've ,

Speaker 2: 2:17:02

They're so important.

Speaker 3: 2:17:03

Tried to lay out here there multifactorial. So , um, in our material medica course, we have full profiles on the following. Bitter plants, Centura , burdock , dandelion, angelica, calamus , yellow dock mug , wart , reishi, mother wart, turmeric, St . John's wart, bone set , wild lettuce, blue ing hops, coffee and cacao.

Speaker 2: 2:17:27

Wait. And also chamomile .

Speaker 3: 2:17:28

Oh yes. Chamomile

Speaker 2: 2:17:30

And Kula .

Speaker 3: 2:17:31

Kula .

Speaker 2: 2:17:32

And I think there's more than that. Did you say yaro ? 'cause we have one on Yaro .

Speaker 3: 2:17:35

I didn't mention Yaro . Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:17:36

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there's more. There's even more than those. So

Speaker 3: 2:17:39

That's at least 20 herbs out of 90, did

Speaker 2: 2:17:41

You say Ella campaign?

Speaker 3: 2:17:43

Yeah . I'm not sure we have a Oh , we

Speaker 2: 2:17:44

Do. We do. We do. We do. Okay . Yeah. So there's a lot is what we're saying.

Speaker 3: 2:17:48

Yeah. Uh, and it's also worth noting that of the 90 herbs that we cover in detail in that course, like 20 or 21 or or so of them have bitterness as a significant part of their Yeah . Flavor profile. So again, let that be a another reminder <laugh> the importance of this, of this group. Yeah . Okay. So that's material medica in our medicine making course. Uh, we do have a whole, a whole chapter on cocktail bitters , um, and how to put them together and a bunch of recipe examples and things like that. Uh, of course, bitters are featured prominently in the nutrition course and the digestion course. We talk about the phyto chemistry underlying the bitter flavor in the phyto chemistry course. <laugh>

Speaker 2: 2:18:29

<laugh> ,

Speaker 3: 2:18:29

Big surprise. And there's multiple mentions, multiple times we come back to bitterness as like a flavor, but also a , a concept in the neurological and emotional health course. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:18:42

And probably, honestly, it probably shows up at least once or probably more than that in every other course. Like I can think of multiple mentions in the first aid course, and you might be like, bitters in first aid. Oh yeah . Oh yeah. Um, so yeah, I think probably, maybe not in musculoskeletal. That might be the only one. Maybe not in integumentary. Maybe.

Speaker 3: 2:19:06

Maybe

Speaker 2: 2:19:07

Because those are primarily topical and you don't taste it if it's topical.

Speaker 3: 2:19:11

There are bitter earths in ,

Speaker 2: 2:19:12

There are bitter earths in work

Speaker 3: 2:19:14

There , but not because the bitter. Okay . Yeah . Yeah .

Speaker 2: 2:19:16

<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 2:19:17

Well, as a reminder, if you wanna study with us, we would love to have you join us. When you learn at Commonwealth Holistic Urbanism, you get courses primarily made up of self-paced video lessons so that you can take them at your own pace and learn on your own schedule. You get access to twice weekly or more live q and a sessions by Zoom with us.

Speaker 2: 2:19:40

So the reason that we do this is that everybody learns best at different times of the day. Yeah . Everybody has different schedules that work for them. And so the bulk of the material you can do anytime that works for you. If you learn best in the morning, if you learn best late at night, if you learn when your kid is taking a nap, like whatever

Speaker 3: 2:20:02

On your commute, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:20:03

Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But then we don't want you to just be alone, just like, oh , I guess I just gotta work through this. And , uh, so that's why we have these live q and a sessions. They're optional, they're all recorded. You, you get all the recordings, but also all the history of recordings, there's like 300 hours of recordings. Well, depending on when you listen to this, there's probably many more. Yeah. Um, of recorded q and A sessions in there. And they all , they have like a global table of contents. And so, but the , the thing is that that opportunity to join live with the whole community, asking questions and seeing how other people are working through their content, like working through their lessons and how are they I implementing this stuff, and how are they thinking about it? That helps you to think about how you're thinking about this stuff and how are you implementing it? And oh, they're doing something cool. I'm gonna try that too, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:20:59

Yeah. What does your bitters blend look like? Know mm-hmm <affirmative> . That kind of thing. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Uh , and you know, on top of that, there's the student community , um, which is , uh, like a kind of like a social media discussion space, but it's not connected to Facebook or Yeah .

Speaker 2: 2:21:13

No , whatever else . No , it's totally private.

Speaker 3: 2:21:14

Yep . Private. But you can open it up on your phone and you can scroll through, but now you're scrolling through herbal learning and herbal community and, and discussion and excitation. Yeah . Um , rather than that other stuff. <laugh>,

Speaker 2: 2:21:26

It's awesome. It's really like, I feel so excited. There are people I talk to multiple times a day in the community and, and there are people who just, you know, pop in once in a while, but I love getting to see what everybody's working on. I love getting to know everybody better and it's just, it's really fun. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:21:45

As you're working through the course material, if you have a question in the middle of a video, you click a button, it opens up an interface, you pop your question in, we answer it within 24 hours mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so you get to keep on moving.

Speaker 2: 2:21:57

And not only that, but like it will send you an email with the answer, so you don't even have to go back and find like, you can, it'll still be there, but also the answer will come directly to you and you don't have to do anything to get it. It will just magically appear in your inbox. Yeah .

Speaker 3: 2:22:14

And of course, there's study guides and we've got quizzes, and we've got assignments for you at the end of each course. And that's all great. And by the way, your access doesn't evaporate , uh, as long as there's an internet and we're on it, <laugh> , you will have access to your courses. Yeah. Yep . And when we make updates in the future, you get those too, right? Yeah. So we think it's pretty good deal, and you can find everything we offer@online.commonwealthherbs.com. Mm-hmm <affirmative> .

Speaker 2: 2:22:39

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:22:41

All right , well, I think we're gonna wrap up. So have you, have you taken your bitters yet today? <laugh> my friends, because if not, like now is the time. Go get 'em.

Speaker 2: 2:22:50

Yeah. Like, I think we've been talking about it long enough. It's time to go and get anything bitter that you've got to hand and get it in you,

Speaker 3: 2:22:57

And you're ready to spread the good word about bitters . So, you know , uh, next human you run into, just hand them something bitter and see how much they smile at you. And you might , you might also want to share this episode with some

Speaker 2: 2:23:09

Friends. Yes . <laugh> , <laugh> . They might not smile about the bitters, but then you can be like, no, no, just listen to this. You'll understand. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . <laugh> .

Speaker 3: 2:23:16

Yeah. We're going to correct the epidemic of bitter deficiency syndrome amongst our peoples. Woo . Let's do that. All right . We'll come back soon with another episode. So until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, drink some tea,

Speaker 2: 2:23:31

Drink some tea,

Speaker 3: 2:23:32

And take your bitters.

Speaker 2: 2:23:33

Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:23:34

Bye everybody. Bye-bye.