My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a pharmacist who dispenses medicinal plants. Today we’ll be talking about new discoveries about “cell signaling,” the secret communication between cells that makes health happen. And how eating fruits and vegetables and taking plant-based supplements helps that communication happen. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD

• Vaccines: Harmful or Necessary?
• Evaluating A Study and Testing a Test
• Seven Deadly Drugs
• The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
• What We Can Do About Cancer
• The Power of pH
• How to Protect Your Health From Toxic Mercury Dental Fillings
• Pharmacology 101: How to Use What Pharmacists Know to Take Supplements to Best Advantage
• Are You Heading For Kidney Failure? Natural Remedies Can Help
• How to Keep Your Blood Vessels Open and Flowing With Supplements
• How Inactivity Leads to Illness and Drug Use—And How Exercise Can Get You Off Drugs and into Health
• How to Protect the Environment from Pharmaceutical Pollution by Using Natural Medicinals
• Hidden Toxic Dangers in Common Dietary Supplements
• See More Clearly with Natural Remedies
• Hidden Mental Health Dangers in Common Drugs
• Different Types of Detox
• Getting Off Prescription Drugs with Natural Remedies
• How Natural Remedies Could Have Saved A Life
• Natural Alternatives to Sleeping Pills
• Natural Back Pain Treatment Options That Work
• How Toxics Age Your Body & What You Can Do to Stay Young
• You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before
• Calcium—Is There Really a Deficiency in America?
• It’s Cold and Flu Season—How to Support Your Immune System and Why You Shouldn’t Get a Toxic Flu Shot
• Toxic Psychiatry and How to Have Mental Health Without Drugs
• Why You Should Take Fish Oil and How To Choose the Right One for You
• Medicinal Plants Can Replace Toxic Drugs

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How Eating Fruits & Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph.

Date of Broadcast: September 10, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It is – what’s the date? Wednesday, September 10th 2014. I’m here in beautiful Clearwater, Florida. The sun is shining today. It’s a beautiful, late summer day. We’re going to be talking today about fruits and vegetables, why you need to eat your fruits and vegetables. It’s really fascinating. It’s probably something that you don’t know anything about because I’m still learning about this subject.

My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She is a pharmacognocist. And what that means is that she uses medicinal plants instead of drugs. She’s very, very, very effective at this. She’s right here in Clearwater, Florida with me and I met here because a friend of mine told me how she had gotten his mother off of all her prescription drugs by using medicinal plants and that right away, she started doing better.

I, of course, immediately went to her and she started helping me with problems that I’ve been having with my body that I’ve been trying to handle for years and years and years. All the things that I have done handled them some, but not as much as I would like. So she gave me some medicinal plants and we’re being quite successful at taking care of problems in my body that I have otherwise not been able to take care of.

So I’m very happy to have her on. She’s on now. I’m having her on every other Wednesday, so the next show will be two weeks from now. She has so much knowledge and so much information. We’re just going through all kinds of what’s coming up. We’ve got it all scheduled out through the end of the year about what we’re going to talk about in terms of how medicinal plants and foods can be used to heal instead of taking drugs.

And she knows all about drugs too because she is a registered pharmacist and is trained in that as well.

Hi, Pamela.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Thank you. I’m very happy that you’re back. So I know what we’re talking about today is cell signaling and how eating fruits and vegetables can help your cells create health. So why don’t you just start by telling us what is cell signaling.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, that’s very good. It is exactly what it sounds like. Your cell communicates with each other. They have little signals, hidden messages perhaps you would call them. The messages that they send each other determine if the cells are going to be robust and healthy and they’re not going to cause cancer or it’s going to be the other extreme where you’re going to be actually repelling cancer, stopping the blood vessels from going to a cancer state.

And so the cell signaling from fruits and vegetables and I’m going to talk about the flavinoids and the compounds in these fruits and vegetables, how the science is pretty concrete and it shows exactly what you can eat, what you can take for supplements to enhance the cell signaling so that cancer cannot form in the body.

DEBRA: That’s just so amazing. And for me, it also comes back to I keep seeing that nature knows best. And when we come back to just being align with nature and eating natural foods and taking natural supplements that that’s exactly what our bodies want. It just keeps being proven over and over again.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it is. So we know in herbal medicine and if you look in the plant kingdom is really there are three bioflavinoids that we look at a lot. Can we use those actually in herbal medicine? There’s quercetin, hesperidin and rutin.
Quercetin was originally found in apples and in onions. Rutin was originally found in buckwheat. And hesperidin is found in the pithy part that’s around grapefruit. That’s where they originally located that. I use quercetin and rutin probably exclusively more so than the hesperidin.

But when I was looking, I went to the National Library of Medicine because I like to have everything be very scientific and to the point and very recent, so I did a recent search of some of the bioflavinoids and I found some interesting information that was just recently published. Actually, one of the studies that was just published was out of August 28th of this year, so it’s very recent. It talks about quercetin preventing prostate cancer through cell signaling, probably signaling to stop prostate cancer from dividing – very, very interesting.

Also, and this is actually something I wasn’t quite aware of. Quercetin looks like it’s preventing neurodegenerative diseases. This is of August 7th of this year in neuroscience. So these are major journals. They’re publishing things about bioflavinoids that show disease prevention and it’s all through cell signaling. It’s affecting the way the cells communicate with each other and preventing disease in the process.

DEBRA: Tell us just a little more about – could you paint a picture of what happens between the cells when they’re signaling each other and how the bioflavinoids and other phytochemicals affect that. Tell us what the cycle is.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay! So what happens is there’s good signals and bad signals. We’re going to try and make it easy because I don’t want to make it too difficult.

DEBRA: Yeah, let’s make it easy.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, exactly, easy for everybody to understand. So there’s good signals and bad signals. The cells have a potential to put up both. So we know that if for some reason bioflavinoids and flavinoids and sesquiterpenes and alkaloids and phenolics, these are all these different compounds that are in the foods, you see, the plants make these compounds to prevent herbivores from eating them. So the plants aren’t making this just for no reason at all.

Quercetin in particular is being made by a plant to maintain the structure of its leaf. So if they took quercetin away from plants, the leaves would fall to the ground. It maintains vascular stability in the vessels that are in the leaves.

So what happens is when you take these components, it interferes and it blocks the bad signals, but the good signals are actually enhanced. And it does this through several different mechanism. What we’re seeing is that it can reduce inflammation and cytokines definitely play a part in disease processes. They’re just recently realizing how these cytokines – and cytokines make you fat too. People don’t realize it too.

That’s why when people eat a plant-based diet, when they’re having a greater proportion of flavinoids in their diet, quercetin, rutin from buckwheat, all these different components, that’s why we know that when cytokines decrease (and those are inflammatory cytokines that are actually produce by the fat cells, the adipose cells), when they decrease, you lose weight. It’s not just because you have less calories coming in, you actually are affecting the signaling out of the fat.

DEBRA: Wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: I think it’s amazing.

DEBRA: It is amazing. So again, that’s when people fruits and vegetables and that is what helps the cell signal your body to lose weight.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly right, yes. We found here that this is also another new study that was published in the Journal of Nutrition in June of this year and we found that overall, when you take quercetin – you can take this as a supplement. There’s different doses that I use for different indication. You can take it as a supplement. And quercetin, they’re seeing here that in cancer patients, it prevents severe weight loss. But in normal patient, it actually can help prevent the cytokines from circulating and prevent weight loss. So it’s actually going to help in both situations – someone that has cancer, but also someone that’s healthy.

DEBRA: Wow! It’s so interesting how this things work. It’s boggling my mind. Let’s just talk about weight loss for a second. Let’s talk about weight loss for a second because there’s so much emphasis on lowering the calories in and burning calories. It’s all about calories and balancing them. But really, there’s all these other things going on that affect things.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Exactly right, that’s exactly right.

DEBRA: It isn’t just the calorie balance.

PAMELA SEEFELD: No, it’s not. And I think it’s really important to realize that because this is what we’re really told in the media. You need to exercise a lot. I work out all the time. You need to exercise a lot and you just lower your calorie. And people are associating that the fruits and vegetables that you’re eating, this type of diet, when you have two-thirds of diet as fruits and vegetables, which is what I recommend, when you’re doing that, you’re thinking, “Okay, I’m consuming less calories, that’s why I’m losing weight.” It’s not the reason why.

Calories are a part of the component, but the big part is that we’re seeing is it’s affecting inflammation and these cytokines that are coming in and out of the fat that make you more fat. Cytokines, inflammation, this is why when people are kind of overweight, they tend to have a lot more arthritis, lupus, all these different diseases. Well, it’s not just because the weight is affecting it. It’s the fact that the cytokines being produced in the fat are making you gain more weight and making you have pain.

So when you take these components, it’s kind of blocking these cytokines. So the circulating amount, the net amount is decreasing. And so these negative signals that are coming from the cytokines and the fat are reduced.

DEBRA: And then you don’t have those problems anymore. This is so – wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s right. The pain goes away, you lose weight. I mean, that’s what’s really happening. I think this is very, very important for people to realize that it’s not all about this guilt trip about how many calories you’re eating a day. It’s not about that. It’s about what you’re eating supplement-wise and food-wise to change the signaling of the cells so that your body is more in harmony and the cytokines are decreased, the fat goes away and you feel better.

DEBRA: We’re going to talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She is a pharmacognocist, which is a pharmacist who uses medicinal plants to heal. We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is pharmacognocist, Pamela Seefeld. What she does is she uses medicinal plants instead of drugs to heal the body.

Now, Pamela, before the break, you made the comment that we should be eating two-thirds fruits and vegetables. That’s a lot of fruits and vegetables especially for people who are not eating them. I mean, I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, but I don’t even think I eat two-thirds fruits and vegetables. And all the vegetables people are eating is iceberg lettuce salad with a slice of tomato on it and lots of dressing. What does that look like to eat two-thirds fruit and vegetables?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, that’s a good point. I’m not saying that I’m always perfect at that. But maybe two weeks, we can try and focus on the vegetables and fruits that you eat. It’s got to have high impact. So maybe it’s not two-thirds of your diet, maybe it’s even half your diet, but the things you’re eating like you’re talking about the iceberg lettuce, it has low nutritional value, we know that the high nutritional value are these plants that have not been modified so much over the time period.

So we know scallion, onion, garlic, green apples. They have not been modified over the past hundred years. They pretty much look the same. Arugula, dandelion greens. And believe it or not, what’s really high in nutrition is watercress because that has not been modified at all.

DEBRA: Wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s really basically a wild plant. So I’m a big fan of incorporating these plants.

DEBRA: I have heard that vegetables and fruits that have a lot of color in them have more nutrient. But this is the first time I’ve heard someone say plants that haven’t been modified. That kind of goes back to the Paleo idea of what people ate many, many years ago. I am very much in favor of people eating as close to nature as possible, but I’ve never divided my fruits and vegetables into like how – how can I even say this?

When I was gardening in California, I would grow heirloom varieties. I loved eating those heirloom varieties because those are the natural non-hybrids. I’m not shopping at the supermarket, so I’m not even going to say that. But if I go to the natural food store or even to a farmer’s market, at a farmer’s market, you can ask the farmers what they planted. But at the natural food store, you don’t know whether these are hybrids or heirlooms unless they’re labeled heirloom and they’re practically not. I mean, even organic, most of what they’re growing is hybrid.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, that’s true. What I would tell you though is that what I make a point of doing that’s pretty easy to do is my breakfast always has a green apple associated with it because the inulin is present in it, the bacteria in your gut really like it. In fact, they’re healthy food, they munch on it. So that’s a good start.

We look at the gala apples and the grannies, just the golden delicious, all those different apples. They have been modified a lot and they have a lot of sugar. Granny Smith apples are a great way to start the day with maybe some Greek yoghurt and some nuts. That’s typically what I have. That has the proteins. It has the carbohydrates and the fat. But the carbohydrates are going to be liberated out of the green apple because of the pectin. It keeps your blood sugar very stable. So it’s a really good fresh start to the day.

DEBRA: Oh, great!

PAMELA SEEFELD: I would say too that the garlic and the onions, I just put tons of that stuff with my lunch and dinner.

DEBRA: I do too.

PAMELA SEEFELD: So we’re really kind of getting it from that. And then, of course, the dark, leafy greens. The trickiest too when you’re looking at the vegetables you’re eating that the variety of the color is important, but what’s really important is there’s fat present on the salad because if there is not, you’re not going to absorb them. These are fat-soluble components. The flavinoids in these fruits and vegetables need to have a small amount of fat.

So olive oil with a little bit of lemon and I usually put garlic in there too, that’s my typical salad dressing because you’re going to really absorb them. If you don’t have something that has a small amount of fat even if it’s just nuts on the salad, you’re not going to absorb these flavinoids. And these are fat-soluble. You want to have them peak in the blood stream.

DEBRA: Then I’m doing the right thing because my salad dressing is olive oil and unrefined salt.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Perfect!

DEBRA: Yeah, and I think that it taste better. I used to be a big salad dressing person. I love ranch dressing and thousand island dressing, all those tasty things. But once I started using olive oil and just unrefined salt, organic olive oil and unrefined salt, you can actually taste the vegetables.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right.

DEBRA: It just taste so fresh that I don’t even want to eat those over the salad dressings anymore.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, it enhances the flavor and that’s really proven to be true. And if you think about it, I was looking here, there’s another study that came out in Cancer Prevention, which was August 26th of this year and it talked about why do fruits and vegetables prevent cancer. The anti-cancer properties appear to be cell signaling the topic we’re talking about today, cell signaling). We know now that this particular cell signaling I was talking about, the cytokines, it down-regulates these cytokines, which can be pre-cancerous (initiators) and it starts something called – it stops angiogenesis.

Angiogenesis is when cancer forms in one area and blood vessels have to come out to feed it particularly. It’s kind of like outside of the normal pipeline so to speak. And angiogenesis is what we want to stop. We want the blood vessels to not go and seed a tumor cell.

So we know now that the plants, when you take them and you consume them, these flavinoids stop that process where the blood vessels are able to go on feed onto the cancer.

DEBRA: Wow!

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, it’s pretty great.

DEBRA: Wow! Wow! So in another show, we learned that sugar feeds cancer. So now we know no sugar and lots of fruits and vegetables, that would prevent cancer in the first place.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And this is in the Cancer Journal or this year like less than a month ago. So that’s really important.

There’s another study I was just looking at today because I did a full Medline search of anything most recently published. This was just published in Asian Pacific Journal Cancer Prevention. We see that lutein bioflavinoid (and lutein, people take it a lot of times for their eyes), lutein has cell signaling pathways and it stops the progression of colon cancer.

So these things are found, these bioflavinoids are found in fruits and vegetables to varying degrees. What you need to do is say, “I need to try and incorporate as many of these in every day for disease-preventing activity.”

Also, too, you can take these things as supplements. And depending if you had a cancer history, we can prescribe bioflavinoids and these antioxidants that go to certain areas depending on which cancer somebody has. I think someday you’re going to see cancer prevention and treatment tailored by their diet.

DEBRA: Wow! That would be so cool. That would be so cool, yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s where we’re headed. Luckily, the cancer journals are picking up on this and it’s not pharmacognosy journals and the people just meeting that are plant scientists. It’s becoming mainstream that people are embracing this. Cell signaling is all about – remember, we talked about dampening the anybody signals, enhancing the good signals.

DEBRA: Wow, that’s amazing. Okay! Well, we’re going to talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a pharmacognocist – and that word, pharma- is drug and then –cog is intelligence. And so it means plants, these medicinal plants have intelligence really. This is what we’re talking about, intelligence and the ability to communicate, which I think is all amazing – not amazing, but so wonderful because I think everything alive can communicate.

Anyway, I’m going to stop talking. We’re going to go to break and we’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is pharmacognocist, Pamela Seefeld. She uses medicinal plants and other things like fish oils to heal the body instead of drugs.
So Pamela, what else do you want to tell us about cell signaling?

PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay! So flavinoids, we were talking about these flavinoids. These bioflavinoids and flavinoids in general are found in plants. There’s also other things that can affect cell signals. I’m going to talk a little bit about some of these other things as well.

But this is interesting, the flavinoids themselves. We’re talking about these components in the plant that the cells produced to keep herbivores from eating then, animal grazing in the grass. They have enhanced activity for us.

It’s interesting. The cytotoxicity or the anti-cancer effects – this is just some chemistry for some people that are interested in that. This is a brand new study that just came out. They have found that the reason why this has anti-cancer effects, the flavinoids that are in your salad is there’s a 2-3 double bond in a C-ring, one of the structures. They look for that in the flavinoids. If it has that double bond, it causes what’s called mitochondrial poisoning.

So the mitochondria if you remember back in highschool, it’s the power house of the cell. It’s where some of the energy is produced for the cell. This actually stops. The cell signaling prevent cancer from having the mitochondria perform correctly and that’s why it kills the cancer cell. So they actually know the very mechanism why these components – you can take them in a supplement or you can take them as well in your salad – actually stop cancer from growing.

Interesting that we see know too is that flavinoids are very much arresting cell cycles with the cell signaling, the cell cycle signaling in breast cancer. And breast cancer we know affects one in eight women in America. So it’s one of the most common cancers. There’s a high propensity of people concerned about cancer – family heredity, BRCA gene testing, all these sorts of things that are going on right now. But really a big prevention of breast cancer is consuming flavinoids and consuming them along with the fat – we were talking about the olive oil – to make sure that you get a high peak in the blood stream.

Another interesting study that just came out too and I think your guests would find this interesting is that there are inhibitors of cell signaling for cancer and genistein, which is found in soy – and I’m not saying people go out and eat tons of soy. I’m saying genistein looks like it has some activity in preventing that.

Now, of course, someone who has a history of breast cancer, eating tons of soy is not a good idea, but a small amount of soy seem to be preventing this and it stops the signaling from the cancer cells themselves.

Now,I want to talk a little bit about Resveratrol because this is a supplement that people take quite a bit. Resveratrol, I really have high regards for, not so much – people say, “Well, I drink red wine.” Well, it’s not really quite the same time. But Resveratrol, if you take medical grade Resveratrol in a capsule, it’s very economical and it’s very effective.

And what we found now in this new study – this just came out this year August 21st, Molecular Medicine Reproductive Technology – in this particular journal, we’re talking about what’s going on as far as proliferation or the acceleration of cancer. We see that if you take Resveratrol, it induce what’s called apoptosis. Apoptosis means that the cancer cell actually burst open and die. So Resveratrol, its affinity for inducing apoptosis or the actual breaking up of the cancer cell is very high.

And also, new studies that just came out prevent cancer in the mouth epidermis. So this means that they look to induce skin cancer in this mice – and this was just published in Cell Molecular Biology in 2014, August 29th. This shows that Resveratrol stopped the mouse epidermis from proliferating for cancer. So it can have anti-cancer effects especially us being here in Clearwater and having lots of sunexposure. Skin cancer is a big problem here in the United States. So preventing skin cancer and the invasiveness of cancer is a brand new study as well. It stops the cancer from actually invading into the tissue.

So all this is through cell signaling. That’s how it works, just all through cell signaling.

DEBRA: And this is just amazing. I hear that – what is it? Like two out of three people have cancer, some big number like that? I think it’s different for men and women. I don’t remember off the top of my head. But these solutions are so simple.

PAMELA SEEFELD: They’re very simple and they’re very inexpensive. You’re going to eat anyway, right?

DEBRA: Right.

PAMELA SEEFELD: And some of the supplements I’m talking about, the quercetin, Resveratrol, if you have a cancer history and so forth, I would be glad to talk to anybody. I don’t charge for my time at my pharmacy. If you had a question about dosages and how to incorporate them and what to eat them with as far as to get the highest peak in the bloodstream, as far as where you want it to target, whether you’re looking at colorectal cancer, breast cancer, any of your clients that are listening here today can call me some time at my pharmacy. I’m just going to give the phone number.

DEBRA: Yeah.

PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s Botanical Resource and it’s 727-442-4955. You could check with me and see exactly what you’re doing as far as gearing towards the right dosage and the right product. I can help you with that.

So, we see also – another study that came out in a cancer journal this year, October. Actually, it’s October of last year. That was the most recent one that came out. In this study, it shows that also Resveratrol stops the cell signaling for prostate cancer. So we were talking before about how the different flavinoids affect prostate cancer. And prostate cancer really for most men that are going to be in their sixties and seventies, they’re going to end up with some kind of prostate issues as well.

Now we know that in the past, they used to treat these things very aggressively and they found that there was incontinence and sexual problems and a lot of things that were associated with it. Now, they’re trying not to be so aggressive because they realized that the outcomes were not as favorable as they thought.

So these are some simple things that you can take if you’re concerned about that. If you’re, males in particular, are having some issues with their prostate, these are simple supplements that you can take to prevent this. But at the same time, you can prevent cancer for the skin as well. So this is really something that can be all-encompassing.

Now, I’m going to talk a little bit about fish oil.

DEBRA: This is just – wait, we need to go to break. Actually, we have one more minute, go ahead, go ahead.

PAMELA SEEFELD: After the break, we’re going to talk about fish oil and I’m going to talk about how that’s cell signaling as well. This is important because a lot of people take omega 3’s and we want to make sure it’s signaling to prevent cancer.

DEBRA: Good! Well, I’ll just say that I’ve been taking fish oil for the last couple of weeks. I absolutely refused to take fish oil before because I don’t eat fish, my body reacts to it pretty badly. But Pamela explained on an earlier show about how fish oil is processed and that if you get a good quality one, then there’s no toxic pollutants in it and it also doesn’t have the protein in it that most people react to.

And so for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking fish oil with absolutely no problem. I actually feel very happy taking it. I go, “Oh, good! Fish oil, it must be doing something right in my body.” So after the break, she’s going to tell us more about this.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is pharmacognocist, Pamela Seefeld. She’s at Botanical Resource in Clearwater, Florida. She has a website, it’s BotanicalResource.com. But you can just call her on the phone. And when we come back, she’ll give her phone number again. We’ll be right back.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is pharmacognocist, Pamela Seefeld who dispenses medicinal plants to heal the body instead of drugs. Okay, tell us about your fish oil. I know that’s your favorite subject.

PAMELA SEEFELD: I love fish oil because it’s so effective and it turns on 300 different genes in the body. So we know it’s all-encompassing, it goes to the entire body. And of course, because it’s fat and fat-soluble, it has high penetration to the central nervous system. We know it works really good to prevent cognitive decline, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, all these types of things that people are really concerned about. It has high penetration for the brain.

The brain is mostly made of DHA. But EPA, giving it on the front-end tends to be more of a mood-elevating load. So actually, when they autopsy, they only find DHA in the brain. So these things are really interesting.

Fish oil, you can get DHA from algae, but a lot of times, I don’t like to use DHA by itself because it can tend to make people depress. So usually, you want to have ratios. There’s different ratios depending on what types of effects we’re trying to do towards mental health.

But the cool part about the fish oil, we’re talking about cell signaling, we know it signals cells all throughout the body and in a favorable manner. For cardiovascular reduction, it’s a 75% reduction of cardiovascular disease. So it’s really significant.

And we know that what it’s doing too as well – and this is a new study that I just downloaded talking about on the skin. Say someone has a cut or an injury and they’re taking fish oil, it looks like injury from blood vessel being damaged, say you get a bruise or a cut, what this seems to be doing is it’s protecting the endothelium, the skin and it allows new blood vessels to go and have more nutrients to the tissue where it’s needing repair.

So somebody that has maybe diabetic wounds or even gum disease, something is not healing correctly, fish oil can be an adjunct therapy to make sure that the blood vessels deliver the nutrients directly to the wound. To me, that is just absolutely amazing.

We’ve known about the effects on the heart and that’s what most people take it for, but really, we know too now that it can prevent the damages taking place. Say something is just not healing correctly, a wound that won’t heal properly or if you have a cut, if you already are on fish oil or taking omega 3’s, it’s going to make a huge difference as far as the blood vessels reaching the area and delivering medication, nutrients, things that will actually repair where the injury took place.

We also see that it helps augment brain repair. Go ahead.

DEBRA: Wow! Well, what I wanted to say is that I’m just thinking about in times past when people ate diets that were not industrial diets, they were eating things like fish and so getting the fish oils. They were eating plants that were just right out of the ground.

If you think about the hunter/gatherer – again, going back to the Paleo diet – and every time I say the Paleo diet, I feel like I want to add a disclaimer and say, “Meaning foods that people actually ate prior to industrialization” because a lot of what’s called the Paleo diet now, I look at those recipes and I go, “Oh, my God!” They’re not very natural even though they’re designed around eating things that are basic to nature. I mean, people didn’t eat a pound of bacon for breakfast, I’m sorry.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. You’re correct about it. They’ve really kind of gone to the deep and say, “Okay, we used to eat lots of meat. So that’s what we’re going to eat, just always meat.” That’s now what it’s about.

DEBRA: That’s not what it’s about and that there is a lot of meat in the Paleo diet, a lot of emphasis. But what I found after being on a Paleo diet for three or four months just trying it to see how it would work, what I found was that it was way too much meat for my body – way, way, way. And it’s not that I don’t eat meat or that I’m a vegetarian or whatever, but it’s just the whole emphasis on all this meat because that’s what people ate in Paleo times.

I actually think that they ate a lot more vegetables and fruits because you could go around and gather them, whereas to eat meat, you have to go kill a big animal.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. And you’re right. If we look at these people that are talking about the hunters and gatherers, they weren’t sitting there eating steaks all day long. That really was not the situation.

DEBRA: No!

PAMELA SEEFELD: They’re eating lots of berries and lots of plant. This is what they decided to start calling the Paleo diet, just basically eating every kind of meat you want. It’s kind of like a modified Atkins, but you throw a few plants in it. That’s not really what we want to do.

We want to say that these plants that I talked about that haven’t been changed that much, colorful vegetables are very important and making sure there’s fat present. All these things are very important. And you can take Resveratrol as a supplement, you can take quercetin as a supplement.

And fish oil is a very, very important supplement. Especially if you want to have maybe mood elevating or calming effects. I do a lot of mental health. And especially if someone has anxiety or lots of stress, you can take fish oil that takes the edge off and makes you just a lot more relaxed about day to day activities.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. I noticed that since I’ve been taking fish oil – I don’t remember what was the mental health benefit we were going for. I’ve only been taking it for two weeks, but I noticed that – not that I was so anxious before, but I noticed my ability to just sit and concentrate and do my work and feel calm and not be worried about things or just have my concentration distracted, I can just sit here and work very calmly hour after hour after hour. And that’s tremendous for me. It’s just tremendous.

I really see everything you’ve given me, I see the benefits. I just see the benefits. And I’ll also just mention just because I’m so happy about it – I’m happy about all of it. I really encourage you if you have anything wrong going on or anything that you want to prevent, please call Pamela because she will give you the right thing.

One of the things that I’ve had problems with is sleep. For years, I’ve had problems with sleep. She gave me Passion Flower. And now, I just sleep the eight hours. I just fall asleep and I sleep for eight hours. I am so happy.

PAMELA SEEFELD: I really appreciate that. That’s really great. And you know too, I have tried probably ten different Passion Flower products for different people. And the one I settled on was the prescription quality. So I’ve really kind of done the leg work. I’ve been doing this probably 20 years. I’ve been 25 years as a pharmacist, but I’ve been doing 20 years of naturopathic pharmacy.

Really, it’s important to understand that people take a lot of different things, they might read a magazine or something, but especially knowing and taking the right dose at the right time and how to make sure that what you’re taking, you respect people’s time and money is really important.

Like the sleep issue, the few products that I didn’t think were working, I don’t have them anymore. That’s what it felt especially even homeopathy. You know I’m a big fan of homeopathy. They’re finding now that homeopathy prevents – it actually affects cell signaling. That’s the brand new studies that came out.

So all the things that I’ve been telling people about homeopathy are really true. It affects cells signaling favorably.

DEBRA: Well, it’s interesting because homeopathy is one of those things where place say, “Well, there’s nothing in the bottle, but the energy of the material is so dilute, but it’s not like eating an apple or something.” That’s interesting that a study has come out to say that. It just goes to show that very small amounts and even just the energetic imprint of things can affect our bodies.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Well, very much so because they found that effected reactive oxygen species, it reduces that. It helped for mediating cell signaling in a favorable manner.

And homeopathy, what’s great about it is you can give this to animal. You can give it to little children. You can give it to adults. And really, a lot of times for homeopathy, I’ll give a homeopathic product that I think really can be all-encompassing for a family. They could all use it in different doses and everybody comes back feeling better.

So people need to embrace that homeopathy really is kind of like secret repair. That’s the way I look at it. It kind of goes to the area of where it needs to in each individual and repairs and stops disease processes on multiple levels.
Wendy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s some amazing. We have so many amazing tools available to us and they all come back down to nature.

The thing that I wanted to say and I got kind of sidetracked before was about how in the past, pre-industrially, people were eating the food that was there in nature. And so it included things like fish oils and a lot of plants. And all these things that we’re talking about, people were getting on a daily basis in their diet because they were eating the foods direct from nature.

And the fact that we need to supplement them and be paying attention to them is because just our average food supply is processed foods and hybrid foods and all these things. It’s so far away from nature. And just as we get back to having the things that we would have if we were just living in a natural environment, then that handles all these diseases because we’re just getting what we need, what our bodies need.

PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s exactly right. A lot of people are embracing fresh diets if you looked around. I mean, this is what people want. But it’s not just that it’s trending, it’s neat. It’s the fact that we know that there’s certain flavinoid you can take, certain doses of fish oil you can take, certain types of Resveratrol like the passion flower product that we’re talking about, there are certain things you can take to really target and say, “Okay, I want a therapeutic outcome. I’m not just taking this because I read about it and I want to take it. It sounds neat!”

That’s what’s really important, using your knowledge. I mean, God gave us, everybody, unique knowledge and applying those talents is what it’s really all about.

DEBRA: Yeah. So I just want to emphasize again what Pamela just said that it is about getting a therapeutic result. And so if you just are going to read an article or go to the natural food store and pick something off the shelf, call Pamela because she has the experience of knowing what to use for what condition and she also has the products that she’s honed down after 20 years of experience to see what works and what doesn’t work and she’s going to give you something that works. Give the number again.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. If they have any questions, they’d like to contact me, my number here in Clearwater is 727-442-4955 and I would be very honored to help any individual that has questions about medications they want to go off of or if they just want to enhance their health or if they actually want to treat a disease state, I would be very happy to share my knowledge.

DEBRA: Thank you very much.

PAMELA SEEFELD: Thank you.

DEBRA: We’re at the end of the show. We look forward to talking to you again in two weeks from today.

PAMELA SEEFELD: I love it! Thank you.

DEBRA: This is Pamela Seefeld, she’s a pharmacognocist and she’s great. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and you’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.