Water | Swimming Pools
High Mowing Organic Seeds
An abundant selection of organic seeds for vegetables, herbs, flower and cover crops, sold in quantities from small to large. “Over 600 heirloom, open-pollinated and hybrid varieties of vegetable, fruit, herb and flower seed. True to our roots, High Mowing Organic Seeds continues to grow many of the varieties we sell on our 40 acre farm, setting us apart from the majority of other seed companies.”
Organic Robes
Luxurious, this thick Turkish robes. This is a GOTS certified organic bathrobe made of GOTS certified organic Turkish cotton. Available in various weights and colors, including an “undyed” option. Also undid organic Turkish cotton towels.
Otter Wax
All-natural Fabric Care and Leather Care, formulated and hand-made in Portland, Oregon. “We use natural ingredients that come from sustainably harvested sources and offer the least amount of environmental impact. Otter Wax products are made from natural plant-based ingredients and humanely harvested beeswax and lanolin without sacrificing effectiveness.”
Children Exposed to Pesticides at Home May Have Increased Risk of Cancer and Cognitive Function
A new report concluded that children who had been exposed to insecticides indoors were 47% more likely to have leukemia and 43% more likely to have lymphoma, both common types of childhood cancers.
Report: Pesticide exposure linked to childhood cancer and lower IQ
Drug-Resistant Head Lice Now Widespread—And How to Control Them Naturally
If you have a child in school, your’ll want to read this story about head lice: Lice With Drug-Resistant Mutations Found to Be Widespread in US, But Experts Say Don’t Panic
And then read this great post by a natural mom about how to effectively control them: Natural Ways to Fight Drug Resistant Head Lice
Time it Takes for Kitchen Cabinet Finishes to Outgas
Question from Nancy
Hi Debra,
I have sent you questions a number of times and really appreciate all the help you provide.
We are having new kitchen cabinets built (using solid wood doors and Purebond plywood interiors). My builder is suggesting using waterborne products for finishing but I am nervous about the VOC’s. He would be spraying them at his shop then bringing them to our house. I was searching for info. on the internet and came across this claim by a cabinet company. Is this true?
“Some interesting facts about any finishing product:
Only top coats emit gases.
By the time cabinetry reaches the home, 97% of the off-gassing has already dissipated.
The remaining 3% takes as little as 28 days (stained with top-coated product) or up to 40 days (painted product) to dissipate; no off-gassing occurs after this.”
I look forward to hearing from and thanks again.
Debra’s Answer
Mmmm. Yes and no.
First of all, there are many types of finishing products and each are formulated differently.
Some act as barriers and others don’t.
If a coat is not fully cured, it will still outgas, and if the coat on top of it does not block gasses, I don’t see why outgassing from layers below wouldn’t go right through it.
It takes different amounts of time for different finishes to fully cure, so to say 97% of all outgassing has occurred for all finishes by the time the cabinet reaches the home can’t be accurate. And it also depends on how long the cabinet has been sitting from the time it is finished and it reaches the home, and under what conditions.
Again claiming that the remaining 3% takes a specific amount of time for all finishes is inaccurate.
The part that’s true is: once the finish is fully cured, there is no further outgassing.
All paints and finishes are made from solids and solvents. The solvents outgas until there is no solvents left, leaving a film that becomes more and more solid as it dries. That’s just the mechanics of it. How long it takes to cure fully differs according to the finish and conditions. Heat speeds as it aids the solvent in outgassing.
I suggest a low-VOC finish and contact the manufacture to find out “how long it takes to fully cure.” Don’t let them tell you how long it takes to be “dry to the touch.” Dry to the touch is still outgassing.
My favorite finish at the moment is Vermont Natural Coatings
Plastic Containers At Container Store
Question from Sami
Hi Debra,
Visiting The Container Store for first time, I noticed their closet storage containers (shoes, sweaters) are made of polystyrene, or polypropylene. Are these non-toxic? Tried to ask them, but they have no idea what I mean (huh?)
I knew who to go to 🙂 Thanks for all you do; enjoy the Fall – it’s almost here.
Debra’s Answer
Yes, I had that experience at The Container Store too.
Polyprolylene is OK, polystyrene is not.
Good you knew who to go to! 🙂
Heating Oil Tank Replacement
Question from Andrea
Hi Debra,
Our 12-gauge steel oil tank has sprung a leak, and we have been advised to replace it as soon as possible. It is located in the basement of our home, so it is accessible (i.e., it does not have to be unearthed, although naturally all proper environmental precautions must be taken in the removing and disposing of it).
I am concerned that the newer oil tanks are more cheaply made and may not be as built to last as our old one was (which lasted decades). I am also concerned about health-related and environmental issues concerning the installation of a new tank. Is there a specific brand, or type, of oil tank that you or your readers can recommend to replace the old tank? There are a few different kinds–some made of steel, some of plastic, some a combination of both.
I hesitate to use one containing any plastic, for fear of them off gassing, or of the plastic possibly having toxic interactions with the heating oil, or of them just not lasting as long as an all-metal tank, although the manufacturers claim they won’t corrode the way metal tanks do. But I just don’t know for sure. Plus the manufacturing of plastic presents its own environmental problems, as well.
I know oil heat is not an ideal heating system overall, but since solar panels and geothermal heating systems unfortunately are not options on our particular property, I still think it is preferable to gas heat, so I am stuck with it for now.
Any advice that you or the readers can provide on the type of tank that would be the best to choose in terms of health, air quality in the home, and the environment in general would be deeply appreciated. As would any tips on avoiding toxic exposure in the home during the tank replacement process.
Thank you very much.
Debra’s Answer
Readers, any experience with this?
The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’ll be talking your heart and some not-so-widely-known dangers that can cause problems. Plus, as always, Pamela will tell us how you can help your heart be healthy and strong, naturally. Pamela has more than 25 years experience choosing and selling top quality medicinal supplements, so she’s seen it all. 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
- 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
- How Eating Fruits and Vegetables Help Your Cells Create Health
- 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
The Hidden Dangers Affecting Your Heart and How You Can Protect It Naturally
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Pamela Seefeld, RPh
Date of Broadcast: September 09, 2015
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’s Wednesday, September 9th, 2015. The sun is shining here in Clearwater, Florida. It’s a beautiful early autumn day.
You know what? I’ll just say this. It’s going to come up on September 21st. It will be the first day of autumn. But actually, that’s the middle of autumn. Autumn actually starts somewhere in the middle of August. As the sun changes angle and the days start getting shorter and cooler, you get this midpoint. It’s just the difference between looking at nature and looking at our civil calendar, which doesn’t have anything to do with nature at all.
But I like to be connected with nature, so I look at time by the solstices and the equinoxes. So we’re moving towards that autumn equinox where the days are equal and the nights will start being longer than the days. I just think it’s a lovely way to look at time.
So I’m very aware of the angle being different of the sun now and that it gets dark here in Florida around 6:00 now instead of 9:00. It makes a big difference.
Anyway, that’s not the subject of the show, but I just like to talk about that. Today, we’re going to be actually talking about your heart and some hidden dangers that can be affecting your heart that you might not be aware of.
My guest is Pamela Seefeld. She is a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. Hi, Pamela.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I am happy to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. I’m happy that you’re here too. I think we just need to keep saying over and over again that drugs are really designed to alleviate symptoms and not to cure the underlying thing that’s happening. So I think what we’re going to be talking about today are some of those things that your doctor probably will never tell you and may not even know. But these are things that we can be paying attention to on a daily basis as we have awareness of what’s going on in our own bodies and things that we can be doing day to day.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, absolutely.
DEBRA: Yeah, good. So where would you like to start?
PAMELA SEEFELD: I did a MedLine search since we were talking about hidden dangers and what are some things that we should be doing or shouldn’t be doing that affect our heart. And so, this is really current published information. Actually, I only went back six months. With everything currently published, this is what we’re seeing as far as the data.
What I found that was very interesting is that inflammation, chronic inflammation is definitely associated with cardiovascular disease. We know this. The reason why it’s associated with cardiovascular disease is it’s not just the myocardium or the heart itself as far as infarction, but it can lead to unstable angina. It can lead to sudden cardiac death stroke and peripheral thrombosis. And what that peripheral thrombosis is are clots that lodge and causes what’s called the deep vein thrombosis. So, these are all directly related to the inflammatory processes in the body.
So treating inflammation…
DEBRA: Wait, let’s talk about inflammation. Could you explain because we hear this word a lot? Could you explain exactly what inflammation is? And let’s talk about what to do for inflammation because I think that regardless of what the illness that somebody might have, or the condition, I think a lot of people in the world today have inflammation.
PAMELA SEEFELD: By far. And the best way to look for inflammation is if you’re going to the doctor, have them do a CRP in the blood stream and check to see if that is related to inflammatory processes that are going on in your body.
A lot of times, you have two different scenarios. You have the camp where the people are actually sore. They have arthritis and they’re sore. They feel sore every day. So that inflammation, they are aware of.
The more dangerous inflammation perhaps is silent inflammation, inflammation you are not aware of, you don’t feel, but because it’s an ongoing and it’s a chronic process, what it’s doing eventually is it’s taking the endothelium, which is the inside of the blood vessels and it is allowing plaque and other things, sticky substances, to affect – especially cholesterol. That’s why cholesterol has always gotten such a bad name. But really, it’s not all about cholesterol. Half of the people with heart attacks, their cholesterol is in the normal range.
So cholesterol is not the demon here. It’s untreated inflammation. If you don’t have the inflammation present, the cholesterol can be high, but it won’t really affect the endothelium or the inside lining.
DEBRA: Mm-hmmm… So then, what can we do? Since this is related to the heart, what can we do to treat inflammation, easy things we can do every day?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, some easy things, believe it or not, is avoiding certain foods that contain a lot of arachidonic acid. It doesn’t mean this is for everybody, but this is pretty true in the general consensus.
Arachidonic acid is an inflammatory component that’s in foods, egg yolks, red meat and peanuts. They tend to have the most arachidonic acid than any foods. Now, I am not saying you have to cut those out forever, but those particular foods definitely raise inflammation in a lot of individuals.
DEBRA: That’s good to know, yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes. So excluding those is extremely important.
I would tell you that there are data that show that dairy is very inflammatory to a lot of people as well. I’m not saying you go on crazy elimination diets, but try two or three days without any dairy. If you have actual physical inflammation that you feel, see if it goes down.
I’ve seen this in some of my clients quite extensively that people have dairy allergies. And dairy allergies will show up as low grade arthritis. That’s the first symptom people normally have. People will feel like they’re just a little bit sore and achy. They just think that maybe they’re getting a little bit older, maybe they over worked out.
Just doing a food elimination of just the dairy for several days (and like I said, the red meat, the egg yolks and the peanuts, eliminating those foods for just a few days) and seeing if you’re feeling better, that makes a huge difference as far as your diagnostics.
DEBRA: Go ahead.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I would also say that I’m a big fan of something called Traumeel. They call it T-Relief now.
It’s got arnica and it’s got a bunch of other different plants that are anti-inflammatory. It’s very inexpensive.
When you use this, it not only lowers inflammation in the body, but it actually repairs little tears in the tendons and in the tissue where you actually maybe have been injured, maybe you did too much yard work, maybe you did too much at the gym, lifted things that are too heavy. That has a really high anti-inflammatory component that’s very, very effective.
And don’t forget fish oil. I mean, I can just talk for an hour about fish oils, omega-3 fish oils.
DEBRA: And you have.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes.
DEBRA: Actually, I should just remind everybody that you can listen to all of the past shows including all of the shows that Pamela has done including her show on fish oils by going to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. They are all there.
Pamela, the other day, I looked and we’ve done more than 20 shows.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, my gosh! That’s wonderful.
DEBRA: Yeah. So there’s a lot of information there. If you just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, there is a link in the menu that says, “Listen to the archived shows.” And if you pulled down there, there’s a submenu and Pamela’s name is right there. You can just click on that and it will take you to all of Pamela’s shows.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I really appreciate that. So, the omega-3 fatty acid, the newest data that came out shows that consumption of omega-3 fatty acids reduced cardiovascular disease. And we knew this, especially the risks. But what it does is it provides a reduction in arterial stiffness.
So the actual endothelium of the arteries, it changes their physical constituent properties. And what happens is when the stiffness is reduced, it allows for the flexibility of the blood vessel and the general health of the endothelium is greatly enhanced. This improves the vascular function.
This actually works on a molecular, cellular and physiological pathway. It affects all three different functions in the cell itself, which is pretty interesting. We know that omega-3 has not just anti-inflammatory properties, but they turn on 300 different genes in the body.
So, when we talk about the arterial wall, they actually can see. This is brand new data that the beneficial effects impacts arterial wall remodeling. So the arterial wall and the endothelium of these vessels, blood vessels around your heart and in your whole body, they actually physically look different after a person has been taking omega-3s.
They incorporate into the cells of the vasculature and they actually find arterial wall remodeling. It looks different.
And this is after less than three weeks. So it’s a huge, huge impact. So now we know what is actually happening.
And don’t forget too (I don’t know if your listeners remember some of the omega-3 facts), but it has anti-inflammatory activity and it also has anti-arrhythmic activity. So somebody that has cardiac arrhythmias and they’re not well controlled on their medications, this can also have a great effect.
DEBRA: That’s great. I love it that a lot of these substances have multiple benefits, not just one. We need to go to break, but we’ll be right back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who also practices pharmacognosy, which is a wonderful field of using plants and other natural substances. Pharmacognosy means drugs with information, substances with information.
We’ll be back after the break and talk more with Pamela about how you can protect your heart from hidden dangers.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, registered pharmacist and also a practitioner of pharmacognosy, which is the use of plants as medicine.
Pamela, before we go on, why don’t you tell us about what you do and give your phone number?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay, great. My background is clinical pharmacy, but I also studied pharmacognosy at the University of Florida. Pharmacognosy, of course, we were describing, is plant medicine. It’s a little bit more than herbalism, talking about the medicinal properties of different plants and how they work in the body.
I have my pharmacy here in Clearwater, Florida. I would be very honored to help your family. It’s a free consultation.
If you have any questions about medications you’re on and if you want to get off of them or if you’re also interested in using some homeopathic medicine to treat chronic illness, maybe you have MS or heart disease or some of the other things we were talking about, diabetes and you don’t want to be on your medication, I can gladly help you with that.
You can call me here at my pharmacy. It’s (727) 442-4955. That’s (727) 442-4955. We use homeopathic medication instead of drugs.
DEBRA: Okay, good. Now before we go on, I just have one more question about inflammation. Inflammation has to do with blood vessels and what’s happening with them. If one has inflammation in their body, then wouldn’t that affect the functioning of every organ?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! And also too (it’s really important), we’ve done shows on weight and weight loss and trying to lose weight. It’s really hard for men and women. When you start reaching 40s and 50s and 60s and so forth, it’s really hard to lose weight and you gain weight very easily with not much caloric of change.
We know for a fact that if there is inflammation in the body that’s untreated and it’s circulating, so to speak – we have something called circulating cytokines, which are these interleukin, these chemical messengers that the fat actually produces.
That’s one of the reasons you see more cardiovascular disease in people that are overweight. The reason why is because their own fat is producing interleukins that are even more pro-inflammatory and cause more weight gain and cause more inflammation to the blood vessels.
So the subcutaneous fat, especially the visceral fat in the abdomen is highly problematic because it’s actually producing more of these inflammatory messengers that are making the person’s health decline even faster.
And this is the problem. Your body is actually working against itself.
DEBRA: I understand what you just said. I think what I’m trying to put two and two together here around is that we have inflammation and then we have organs of the detox system like the liver and kidneys and lungs. And if one has inflammation in the body, then that would inhibit the functioning of their detox organs.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Correct! Because the inflammation, what it’s doing, is it’s actually working against itself.
You’re having the body producing more inflammatory components.
And the blood vessel inflammation (we’re talking about the heart today), this inflammation and the change in the endothelium, when there are interleukins and components that are pro-inflammatory, the changes in the endothelium are robust and very negative and they are affecting the blood vessels, especially going even into the kidney.
This is actually interesting. In one of the studies I was pulling, Deb, there’s a system in the kidney. And as pharmacists, we know about this quite well. There’s something called the renin-angiotensin system.
The rennin-angiotensin system is associated with the kidney and it controls blood pressure. This is why when people have pre-dialysis or dialysis or they have kidney disease, why they have to be on what’s called converting enzyme inhibitors or ACE inhibitors. They have to be on these medicines that affect the renin-angiotensin system because when people’s kidneys are not functioning properly, this system goes awry and what happens is blood pressure goes up.
So that’s why you see a lot of people on dialysis or people that have kidney problems on blood pressure medicine.
That’s why the blood pressure goes high. It’s not because they’re heavy, it’s not because they did anything. It’s because the kidney is messed up.
The studies show that inflammation and oxidative stress with the renin-angiotensin system not working correctly because the person maybe having some pre-kidney issues or actually are on dialysis is leading to excess atherosclerosis.
So we know when someone has metabolic syndrome or kidney problems at the same time and the renin-angiotensin system is not working correctly, they end up being put on a bunch of blood pressure medications, they feel very sick and inflammation and oxidative stress actually increase.
DEBRA: Okay, good. I understood that.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s what’s really happening. So when you see people that are diabetic and maybe they have kidney problems too, it’s really, really terrible that the body is producing all these extra inflammatory components that are damaging the kidney. And when they damage the kidney, we’re starting the blood pressure problem.
That’s why you see typically when a person has kidney issues or metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes, that’s why they need blood pressure medicine, that’s why they need cholesterol medicine. All these medicines come for a reason and this is all because of the inflammation. If the inflammation wasn’t present, none of this would be here.
DEBRA: So, it looks like it is really important to treat inflammation regardless of what your condition may be in your body. And especially with our subject of detox, it can interfere with your body’s detoxifying as it should, which would lead to a greater build-up of toxic chemicals in your body.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, most definitely. All those things, it’s a logical progression. But it’s important that your listeners know that instead of feeling overwhelmed, they should realize that these things are working against you.
The best thing to do is maybe use some homeopathic stuff in the beginning to try and clear it out or make sure that you are on top of things because unfortunately, your practitioner, your physician is just going to keep adding medicine. If you’re trying to avoid that, you need to make sure you’re addressing this in the top form and not just putting it to the side.
And like I said, inflammation can be silent. So, you need to make sure that you’re checking these numbers.
DEBRA: And what were the numbers again? You gave some numbers earlier.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I would tell you, the most important thing they can check is your CRP. But if you actually have inflammation and you’re sore, that’s a dead giveaway that you’ve got a real problem there especially if it’s an ongoing basis or even if, say, someone’s diagnosed with arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis.
It’s not the arthritis that’s going to get them, it’s the cardiovascular disease. So, it’s important to realize that these things go hand in hand with a lot of other diseases. It’s not like one thing is not connected to the other.
Our bodies are contiguous. All the blood vessels are connected to the other blood vessels. So it’s not just one area of your body.
Anything that’s not being treated (maybe just some simple homeopathy to prevent some of the problems associated with it) makes a huge difference in the long haul as far as the person’s general health. That’s very important to realize.
DEBRA: Good. When we come back from break, we’ll talk more about the heart. We’ll stop talking about inflammation and go back to the heart. I just am really interested in inflammation and how it contributes to detox.
So, when we come back, we’ll talk with Pamela more about some other hidden dangers affecting your heart. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. We’re talking about hidden dangers that can affect your heart. Pamela, are there some toxic chemicals that can affect your heart as well?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah. Actually, there are endocrine and neuroendocrine disruptors and these chemicals and electricity too. I’ll pull the studies for that here. It’s interesting. Let me pull these studies here.
Studies show as far as these chemicals and things we’re exposed to environmentally (and we’ll talk a little bit more about different vitamins again after that), what they’ve found is (and like I said, these are recent studies) that neuroendocrine disrupting chemicals act like estrogens and androgens and glucocorticoids in the body, but they’re not really the actual chemical.
These are found in industry, agriculture and food preservatives. And these all have problems. They affect the endocrine system. They have activity on the same receptors as estrogens and testosterone and so forth. These things look like the hormone and they’re mimicking it. They can cause sex hormone dependent cancers, but especially obesity and cardiovascular disease (that’s what are implicated as far as if the people have high exposure to these particular things).
This is really important because what’s happening is this is stuff that you don’t realize you’re being exposed to. And the fact that they’re docking in on the receptors and doing the same thing as the chemicals, but actually in a more dangerous way (because your body is not expecting these to be present on the receptor and then all of a sudden, they show up), it has cardiovascular implications that are pretty severe.
And definitely, this is why we think that we’re seeing a rise in cardiovascular disease here in the United States. It’s not because people are eating more poorly. They always want to blame it on diet. It is not so much diet, but the neuroendocrine disruptors are really creating problems.
What they’re finding in these people is they’re having huge amounts. They’re exposed to maybe plasticizers and so forth or they work in industry. What they are finding is that they have much higher rates of cardiovascular diseases as a result of it. So this is statistically significant and I thought this is interesting.
Now, you would know about this quite more than myself because I’m more of a chemistry person. But it looks like they looked at electrical staff, people that are working around electricity, they found that electromagnetic fields had a higher incidence of cardiovascular diseases, these people that were actually exposed to EMF fields of 50 hertz. It actually has almost the same effect as being exposed to chemicals.
DEBRA: Wow! That’s something that I need to look up and find out what would be a 50 hertz exposure. That’s something to keep in mind.
PAMELA SEEFELD: It’s affecting the nervous system. That’s what they think.
DEBRA: Yeah. And of course, this is what they’re studying, just to find out what are the effects. This is all new.
People weren’t talking about these kinds of things even 10 years ago. So I’m really happy to see all this coming out.
And then, what about carbon monoxide?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Carbon monoxide, most definitely. They found that exposure to carbon monoxide – most people here in the United States actually were pretty fortunate. We don’t have indoor kitchens where we’re cooking food with twigs and stuff. But you have to realize that a third of the world does not have a toilet, does not have electricity and they cook in an enclosed area in their house with wood that they gather.
We have carbon monoxide exposure in varying degrees maybe depending on what we have burning in the house and also the fact that we have carbon monoxide sensors in a lot of homes. I actually have them in my house. We know it can be a dangerous thing, but it’s not as troubling as perhaps other areas that are much poorer than we are, but it’s still very important. And the study did show people that especially are working in kitchens and so forth, if it’s enclosed and there’s no proper ventilation.
And this could even be in the house. People sometimes go crazy where they’re cooking a lot of food on the stove, maybe they’re not having the windows open. Maybe it’s a small home, maybe it’s a small kitchen. What they found is that carbon monoxide, when they started to be elevated to some degree, what they did is they did the cardiac enzymes of these people and they found that they were elevated. They’re not elevated enough to cause a heart attack, but there were mild elevations, which signaled that the heart was being damaged.
This makes sense because we know carbon monoxide. And of course, we know with suicide attempts and so forth, you can kill yourself with this.
DEBRA: Right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: But you’re exposed to small, small amounts of it when you are cooking in your house. And it depends on the ventilation and it depends on the size of the kitchen. Sometimes people have really small kitchens and there’s no proper ventilation.
You may see this more in big cities. Here in Florida, we have pretty much bigger homes. But when you think about New York and Boston and these tiny little apartments, you’ve got to be really careful with what you’re doing.
DEBRA: Especially if you are cooking with gas.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes.
DEBRA: A gas burner will give off what’s called combustion byproducts and carbon monoxide is only one of them.
So if you are cooking with gas, it’s really important to make sure that the burners are adjusted properly, so that they are burning cleanly and also that you have overhead hood ventilation and you make sure that you turn it on when you’re doing the cooking. Those two things will greatly reduce the amount of carbon monoxide. But you should also have a carbon monoxide detector and this is the way to more safely use gas.
But I know in some apartments, I have seen where there’s a gas stove and then there’s a closet with a gas water heater and all these flames are just open flames and all that carbon monoxide and other combustion byproducts are just going throughout your home.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You’re absolutely right. People don’t even look at that. You need to emphasize that. That is very common.
DEBRA: It’s very common. And I know that also, these things can go wrong. My grandmother had gas heat. This was a long time ago. She had gas heat and something went wrong with it and it started putting carbon monoxide in her house and she almost died.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, my gosh.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah. So this can happen even today. And I know for myself, I have gas in two of my homes.
We have the water heaters in the [inaudible 00:33:01] places and the open flames are still there in the previous ones.
The new ones are up to code. But unless you actually go there and change it out, you don’t see that.
DEBRA: That’s right.
PAMELA SEEFELD: I mean, I had no idea.
DEBRA: That’s right. I have a gas water heater, but it’s one of those instant water heaters.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh yeah, those are excellent!
DEBRA: So there’s no tank. It’s a tankless water heater. It’s mounted on the side of my house and so there are gas exhaust fumes, but they go outside.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s very smart.
DEBRA: They’re not in my house at all. They’re not in the garage, not anywhere near the inside of my house or an open window.
PAMELA SEEFELD: The interesting part about this little study here (and this was actually from April this year), the very, very small amounts of exposure to this, we are making small changes in the cardiac enzymes in the blood stream. They have very, very fine equipment to detect this.
Let me explain this. When you have enzymes and you can measure them in the blood stream, it means that the cells died. In the medical sense, it’s called cardiomyopathy when the heart gets weakened because some of the cells die.
If you have enough cells dying, that’s a heart attack. Once your cells die, they release these cardiac enzymes and that’s how they diagnose heart attacks. A heart attack is basically a certain area of the heart basically dying, the muscle, especially because it’s trying to over-compensate because that area is not pumping correctly anymore.
So this is important to realize in the ventilation. These are really important things to look at in your immediate environment and say, “Is this something that’s affecting me?”
DEBRA: Yeah. There are also other health effects of combustion byproducts and some of them cause cancer. Formaldehyde is one of them. So this gas thing is a really important thing and probably we should talk a lot more about that.
Anyway, you are listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. When we come back, we’ll talk more about what you can do to protect your heart from these hidden dangers. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist, but she also is a practitioner of pharmacognosy, which is the use of plants for medicinal purposes.
Pamela, why don’t you give your phone number again?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yes, you can call me here at my homeopathic pharmacy. I would be very glad to help you and your family, also your pets if you have any questions about them as well. The number here at Botanical Resource is (727) 442-4955. That’s (727) 442-4955.
DEBRA: Great! And that’s a free consultation. You can just call her up and Pamela herself will talk to you. She’s very well regarded here. I’ve taken some of her recommendations and they all turned out perfectly.
So Pamela, we are in our last segment here. Why don’t you tell us some of the remedies for these things? We’ve talked about so many problems.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is good. No, this is really good. Most people know that D is very important. It looks like low vitamin D levels, we’re definitely putting people at risk for cardiovascular disease and also risk for developing metabolic syndromes.
So it’s important to realize that in the past, the doctors wanted your vitamin D level maybe 30 or something like that, 20 to 30, something in that range. Well now, the alternative physicians (and actually a lot of medical establishments) are really embracing that they want you closer to 100. If your D levels are low, you definitely need to be taking more D and to try and get that up. It’s very important.
This is brand new study that just came out actually in August of this year. It found that when people had poor vitamin D status, they were more at risk for developing metabolic syndrome and more at risk for having heart disease.
D is not just for the bones (and we’ve known that for a while). D is a hormone and it acts in the brain. It works especially for depression. It protects against depression and lot of other things, but it looks like it has really strong implications in preventing against cardiovascular disease.
So knowing where your concentration is really important. If you’re going to do any blood work at all, you really need to have your D level made. And then you also need to have your CRP done. That’s very important, those two things, the inflammation marker and the D level. They tell a lot about what’s going on in your body.
DEBRA: I know that I’ve had difficulties sometimes getting a medical doctor to do some blood tests that I want because they say, “We can only request what the insurance company will allow us to request for your diagnosis.” But there are places online. It’s very easy to get all these tests and you can just go to one of those online places and get a vitamin D test.
There’s a whole organization that all they do is vitamin D test. So you don’t have to be dependent on a medical doctor to get a blood test and find out what’s going on in your body.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a very good point because I’m sure some people that don’t have a regular doctor feel pretty helpless when they listen to these things. They don’t want to go to the doctor and they don’t want to have a blood test with a regular doctor. The fact that they have other alternatives and they are not forced to have an office visit, that’s very relieving for a lot of people.
DEBRA: Yes. And if you think this is going to cost a lot of money, just go look and see what it costs because I went to those websites to see, it costs much less than I thought it was going to.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely.
DEBRA: So it is an option for you. You don’t need to go to a doctor to get a blood test. Okay, go on.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Okay. So another really interesting thing (and I don’t know if people really thought about this), but it looks like women, just being a woman puts you more at risk for vascular problems, blood vessel problems, inflammation and cardiovascular disease, all of these. And we see that the prevalence is really related to women.
And what’s happening is a lot of times, it’s being linked to arterial stiffness. We were talking about the artery stiffness and lipid disorders (which is the elevated blood lipids) and in correlation with this, any kind of sleep apnea that’s untreated. So the sleep seems to have a big effect on this.
And we were talking previously about the fish oil. There was a new study that showed in July this year that fish oil plus vitamin E lowered LDL cholesterol and it lowered oxidative stress and it also helped for prevention of cardiovascular disease. So get some low dose of vitamin E, the fish oil.
This is really important that we’re talking to the implications for women because it seems like the woman gender has more chance of this being a problem than men. That’s important to realize, especially peri and post-menopausal more so because that’s when the hormones are changing. That’s when the adipose tissue in the abdomen tends to start really being active with the inflammatory components.
When you think about women, they go through menopause. And then all of a sudden, they have all those fats in the middle, little rolls in the middle.
DEBRA: Yeah.
PAMELA SEEFELD: That’s a new onset for them. Maybe they were thin all their lives and all of a sudden, they have fat in the middle. And it’s not because their diet changed. A lot of it is decrease of estrogen, but also the fact that if that happens, those cells, remember, start making more inflammatory components and actually make you gain more weight.
I think that’s a lot of what’s going on in menopause. It’s not just estrogen decrease. There are increased inflammatory markers in a lot of middle aged women that are causing a lot of these problems.
DEBRA: Now that you brought that up, I just want to mention one thing about that. Weight has been an issue for me my whole entire life. I don’t think that I’ve ever been in what one would call “normal weight.” I was born overweight. So it’s always been a struggle. I’ve always had this weight around the middle no matter what I did.
But now, I’m older. I’ve said several times on the show that I had my 60th birthday this year and I’m doing different things. And two things that I’m doing that are very different are that I’m eating a tremendous amount of more fiber than I ever have in my life and I really actually calculated how much fiber I was eating and found some high fiber foods. I’m eating those high fiber foods with every meal. I really, really [inaudible 00:45:24].
PAMELA SEEFELD: Good for you.
DEBRA: Yeah. And the other thing that I’m doing is I’m walking in a pool at a gym three or five days a week. I’m only walking about 40 minutes, but I am really walking and I’m doing things to have more resistance like keeping my fingers together in my hands so that they’re more like paddles. And my fat around the middle is reducing.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Good for you! Well, most definitely, all those things will work.
DEBRA: Yes. And so I think one of the things that’s really been impressing upon me this week is that there really are things, actions that produce effects, that when we take some actions, they do something for better or worse. [Inaudible 00:46:15]
So if we want to do something in a particular direction, if we know what those actions are and do them, we’ll move in that direction. It’s just like if you walk down the street and get to the next block, you just put one foot in front of the other and you’re going to get there. It’s just very predictable.
PAMELA SEEFELD: You’re absolutely right. The small changes do help.
DEBRA: Yeah. If you walk backwards, you’re not going to get to where you want to go.
So just being aware (I know we’ve talked about a lot of things today that might sound scary), but just be aware of the things that are the negative things and saying, “What can I do about those?” and knowing what are the positive things (like taking supplements or some homeopathic remedies or things like that) and actually doing those things will move you forward, that’s where you have control over what your health is going to be.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely. And these are some simple things. We’re talking about vitamin D, we’re talking about E, we were talking about looking at the carbon monoxide release in your house and the amount that’s there.
Also too, I found some studies here (we’ve kind of talked about this in the past), folic acidstatus is very, very important. So, folic acid really has always been implicated in preventing against cardiovascular disease. And the big things that it’s doing, it’s playing a role on preventing any kind of damage in the blood vessels themselves and in the heart.
But also what’s interesting (we’ve known this for a long time) is that folic acid and B vitamins are associated with lowering homocysteine. And homocysteine is a marker in the bloodstream. That’s another blood test that you can also order, the homocysteine level.
Homocysteine is really a marker of inflammation more so though for cardiovascular outcomes. It’s not necessarily an inflammatory marker per se, but when we see homocysteine elevated, the physician, in turn, will be concerned about what’s going on specifically with the body.
And homocysteine, especially if somebody has cardiovascular disease in their family, if it is elevated even mildly, that’s normally a red flag that they are going to be at risk for heart attack.
Homocysteine comes down very, very nicely and reproducibly with folic acid, maybe some pyridoxine and a little bit of B12. I use a formula that I love a lot. It’s really good. It’s called Cardio B. That’s got five milligrams of folic acid, it’s got 100 of pyridoxine, 1000 of B12. It’s great for energy. It’s great for mental health because folic acid binds to serotonin in the brain. It has really reproducible effects of lowering homocysteine really, really thoroughly in the body.
That’s an easy, inexpensive way to get homocysteine down and in turn, lower your risk.
DEBRA: Good! These are all really good suggestions. We’ve only got about a minute left. So are there any final words on this?
PAMELA SEEFELD: Most definitely! The last of the studies that I found was in July 22nd, 2015 of this year, melatonin in the endoplasmic reticulum. What are the effects? Melatonin, our levels of melatonin, melatonin is an antioxidant. It’s anti-inflammatory. It has anti-tumor effects. It’s not just for sleep. So it’s really important.
And melatonin is a very safe supplement to take if you’re having any sleep disturbances. Really, they looked at sleep disturbances and instability in sleeping and night time instabilities. They’re very much associated with cardiovascular outcomes in a poor way.
DEBRA: Wow!
PAMELA SEEFELD: So melatonin, we see the people, if their melatonin levels are coming at the right time and there are high peaks in the blood stream (and it can be faint)…
DEBRA: And I have to interrupt you because we just ran out of time.
PAMELA SEEFELD: Oh, yes. Sorry. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you.
DEBRA: Thank you. You’ve been listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest was Pamela Seefeld. And you can find out more about our guests, past, present and future at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Be well!
The Healing Power of Organic Herbs
My guest today is Jane Hawley Stevens, Founder of Four Elements Organic Herbals. From the time Jane chose her professional path, it was clear it was with the plant world. For over 30 years she has specialized in herbs. Four Elements Herbals began in 1987 as the pursuit of Jane’s dream to establish a family farm and continue her horticultural career while raising a family. Jane started producing herbal products made from herbs she grew on her farm. Certified organic since 1990, she still grows and produces herbal products from the 130-acre farm in the pristine Baraboo Bluffs of Wisconsin, designated as one of the Last Great Places by the Nature Conservancy. Her products are inspired by the healing qualities of herbs and align with the power of Nature. They are available online and at health food stores and supermarkets throughout the Midwest. www.fourelementsherbals.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Healing Power of Organic Herbs
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jane Hawley Stevens
Date of Broadcast: September 08, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It’s Tuesday, September 8, 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And we’re having a pretty big thunderstorm right now. So if you hear any rumbling in the background, I have a pretty sensitive mic. If you hear any rumbling in the background, it’s thunder and lightning.
Actually, I live in place that is one of the extreme weather capitals, actually, on the whole planet. We get a lot of thunderstorms. It’s been raining every day for the past month. So there’s a lot going on here.
It’s also the day after labor day. And so that’s the end of summer. We’re all back from vacation. Everybody is starting school, going back to our jobs. So there’s a lot of activity going on.
One of the things that’s happening that I just had to tell you about is that the state of California has filed an intent to declare that glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in RoundUp, which is sprayed on GMO foods, they filed this declaration to declare it as a cause of cancer.
Now, what the means in the state of California is that if a product contains an ingredient that causes cancer, according to proposition 65, it has to contain a warning label. There has to be a warning label on the product that says, “This product contains an ingredient known to the state of California to cause cancer.”
So this is going to be very interesting to me to see what happens about food products now that contain GMO ingredients. Are they going to get the proposition 65 cancer warning label? This is very, very interesting.
So today, here I’m back after – last week, I didn’t do any live shows. But this week, we’ve got live shows. I’ve actually got my schedule for guests for the whole entire month of September already booked. People are really excited about being on the show. I’m really excited about having them on. It’s a whole new year. It’s a whole new year.
So my guest today, we’re going to talk about something we’ve never talked about before on the show and that is herbs and their power to heal and using herbs in personal care, healing products.
My guest today is Jane Hawley Stevens. She’s the founder of Four Elements Organic Herbals. It’s a beautiful website and we’re going to learn all about herbal products today.
Hi, Jane.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Hi, Debra.
DEBRA: I’m so happy to have you on. I love your website.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Thank you so much. I am so happy to be the first one to be talking about herbs on Toxic Free Talk Radio. It’s such an appropriate subject to be talking about.
DEBRA: I think so too because one of the things that I’m very aware of is that there’s a whole spectrum, and on one end is very, very toxic, and on the other end is totally pure and wonderful. But there’s a whole gradation of things that you could just move in the direction away from very toxic and slightly toxic or not toxic, I think. But non-toxic would be the middle of the scale, zero, where there’s no positive effect to no negative effect.
But then you can cross that point and start having things that have no harm and have tremendously, wonderful, beneficial effects.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, like they have then for thousands of years.
DEBRA: Yes. So tell us how you got interested in herbs. Tell us about yourself. You’ve got this large farm, 138 acres, I think it was. So tell us how you got interested in this.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: So when I was a child, my grandmother used to take me out in the woods in Northern Wisconsin. I’m here in Wisconsin. We’re known for the natural beauty in this state.
So when I had to pick a career, I realized I just was happy as outside, remembering those days when my grandmother would take me out in the woods to pick blueberries. So I just realized my career should be outside.
So I chose horticulture as a career. I went to school at University of Wisconsin Madison. I got my horticulture degree. And my first job out of school, they asked me to put in an herb garden.
So I was first introduced to herbs for garden design. I learned about how they grew and handled them well that way. And then I learned about using them for crafts and cooking. But then when my son was born in ’87, I started making remedies for the family.
I just approached it even like folklore. I didn’t really know how they worked or anything. But when I saw that they were healing my family, my son, quicker than my friends who were taking their kids to the doctor, quicker and more effectively, with less side effects and less recurrences, I just had to learn more and more about this.
So it has become my passion and my path since really 1981 to study herbs and how they heal us.
DEBRA: I really think that if we want to heal our bodies (and our bodies certainly need healing in today’s world), if we want to heal our bodies, the best thing to do is to look to nature for that because I do think that there’s a synergy between herbs and plants and animals and humans, just the whole natural world functions as this one whole.
And to step outside of that and say, “Okay, we’re going to use something synthesized in a laboratory like a drug,” and expect that to do what a living thing does like an herb, they are just two different things.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, they are two different things. And what herbs have (which drugs don’t) is hundreds or thousands of years of use and proving that it works well and it works on how many different people and cultures that these plants have worked.
In fact, for some plants that we use for healing, they have been used in different cultures in different times and have been recorded for the exact same use. So that’s a proof that those plants worked.
Personally, I’m in the camp that I don’t even need scientific proof anymore because I have seen so much. Although it’s beautiful we have science available to us for those who really want science to prove things, but I just see plants do so many wonderful things and healing. It’s just phenomenal. In a way more balanced way than drugs do.
DEBRA: Well, I do think that our own personal observation is just as valid as the observation of a scientist, especially if we’re – I mean, scientists are mostly looking at modern technology and chemicals and things like that. It’s not to say that scientists don’t look at plants because some do, but I think that each one of us can certainly observe with our own senses if our body is getting better by doing something or if our body is getting worse.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Right! And another thing that we’re lacking in this culture is even to trust our own senses and our intuition. That’s a message I’d like to be putting out there too. We’re all born with intuition. There’s nothing in our culture that really supports that.
So it’s using herbs, it is really great to listen to your own business. Two, you need to know what herb you’re – well, that’s the one of the really fun things about herbs. It makes you look closely at your body and look up in a good herb book what can help heal you and make that connection and really help in self-healing, which I think is just so important these days.
DEBRA: If somebody is wanting to heal themselves with herbs, should they be going to a professional who knows what they’re doing in order to get those herbal remedies? Or can people look it up in a book on how there are herbs that people should watch out for that might not have positive effects?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: I think both. If you’re dealing with a really chronic, big situation and you want to go to nature for healing, thankfully, there are so many trained professionals out there. Naturopaths and acupuncturists are both trained in herbalism. And so, those are two places to go.
But for every day, common problems that pop up, I think to have a good herb book like anything by David Hoffman or Rosemary Gladstar, I would recommend. Having an herb book is just key. And even if you could grow even five plants or so, you could do amazing things for your family’s health and your health.
DEBRA: That’s great. We need to go to break. But when we come back, let’s talk more about how you can grow your own herbs.
I would like to hear more about that and which herbs actually we should be using. What are those five basic herbs that we could grow in our own backyards?
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jane Hawley Stevens. She’s the founder of Four Elements Organic Herbals. When we come back, we’ll hear more about how we can grow our own herbs and also, how she’s growing herbs and her herbal products.
We’ll be right back.
But I just want to say the sun is coming out. No more thunder, so I think we’re fine. We’re not going to get disconnected or anything.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: That’s good. Nice to have rain too, but it sounds like you’ve had plenty.
DEBRA: We’ve had plenty. So what I did last week instead of doing radio shows live was I was working very intensively in my garden. And when I lived in California, I had a beautiful, organic garden, and then I moved to Florida and everything is different. I didn’t garden at all last year. But I want to garden this winter.
And here, we garden over the winter because if in the summer time, it’s too hot. And you probably did the opposite in Wisconsin where it’s very cold in the winter time.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Correct!
DEBRA: So I’m about to start planting for my growing season. So tell me what are the herbs that I should plant and what they’ll do for me.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: So I have a list that I work with in Wisconsin, but I think they would work well in Florida. I did live in Texas for six years where I first started my business and grew herbs.
So my number one favorite herb is lemon balm. Lemon balm, the Latin name is Melissa officinalis. And whenever you see ‘officinalis’ as the species of a plant, it means that it was a traditional healing plant when the plants were named in the 1700s.
But lemon balm not only is easy to grow, it’s a perennial. It smells really good. You get a lot of volume per one plant even. And it’s so easy to harvest and it tastes delicious.
Not only that, it has such wonderful healing qualities. It has been proven to shorten the duration and lessen the symptoms of cold sores, so it has antiviral quality.
My favorite use is that it’s very calming on the nerves. It’s called a nervine and it really helps to calm you down for anxiety, stress. And it’s said to even impart joy. And when you smell it, you would – it’s very believable because it’s just so sweet and delightful.
So it’s good for all those reasons and good for digestion, and probably a whole lot more. This plant just does about everything. I like to travel with it to keep me calm and healthy. So that’s just a great one.
DEBRA: So how would you incorporate that in taking it? Would you make a tea out of it, or what would you do with it?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, you can make – the most traditional way to use herbs is either in tea or just eating them. But lemon balm is such a delightful tea. What you do is just – you can pick it fresh or dry it for when it’s not growing, and put it in a teapot or a cord canning jar.
Just loosely fill the jar with lemon balm that you had picked fresh, pour boiling water over that, seal it so the volatile oils don’t escape, which contain a lot of the flavors. So then you keep that nice lemon-y flavor in the jar. And then just let it steep for 10 minutes or so, and then you can start enjoying your tea.
And the same is true for other herbs that we’re going to talk about that are either the leaves or the flower portion of the plant.
If we get in to talking about roots, barks or seeds, that’s when you have to simmer the plant a little bit in order to get the qualities to come out of the tissues. They’re a little more firmly bound in leaves, barks and seeds.
So another great one would be chamomile, and chamomile is similar to lemon balm in the way that it’s calming. It’s actually even more calming. I even think of it as more sleep-inducing. I wouldn’t drink a chamomile tea unless I’m having a really, really stressful day, or if it’s later in the day and I wanted to help me go to sleep.
I used to make chamomile tea for my kids when they were sick because it’s calming and it’s antiseptic, slightly antiseptic, so it helps to kick out infection. It helps with digestion. It has some bitter qualities in it. So it’s good to have for anyone just to help aid their digestion.
We don’t think of bitter so much in this country for digestion, but it really helps to aid digestion by eating a little or having a tea that has a little bit of bitter quality in it because it just gets your whole digestion going. Maybe we can talk about that more later because now we’re talking about the best herbs to grow.
And again, with chamomile, you would collect some flowers, and the more you pick them, the more they’re going to produce.
So I Wisconsin, we pick them twice a week, or maybe three times a week, and they don’t like the real, strong heat. So they like, for us, they come up with lettuces in Wisconsin that would be in May when it’s still cool out. And then when it starts getting hot in August, they’re done. They go away. So we just chill them under and put a cover grub in this past weekend on that.
So in Florida, they’d be the first thing that you’d plant. Just think of them as when you plant lettuce, whenever you plant lettuce in whatever region you’re in.
So then I think sage is a really great plant because of how strongly antiseptic it is. That one you should – it likes good drainage. It’s a Mediterranean plant. It doesn’t mean it likes to be bone dry, but where it’s planted, it needs to be well-drained, which I think Florida would provide a good kind of soil type, if you added some organic matter to your – I know it’s kind of shelly in your – isn’t it?
DEBRA: Yes, it is. But I just want to mention that we have about 45 seconds, so we need to go to break.
So tell us what the other –
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Okay, sage and then because it’s antiseptic and it’s really good for cooking and for tea. And Echinacea is such a great beautiful plant. It adds a lot of beauty to your garden, and it’s great for boosting the immune system, and you can use the flowers, the leaves, and the root on the Echinacea.
DEBRA: Let’s say that’s one, two, three, four. You have a fifth one?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: I love elderberry or nettles. Let me see. I guess I’ll just pick holy basil.
DEBRA: I love holy basil.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It’s really gaining popularity in America, and it’s traditional in India, also known as tulsi or tulsi, as they say in India. And it’s delicious in a tea. And it’s what I’m drinking right now. It’s great for clarity, for keeping you healthy, it tastes delicious, and it’s an –
DEBRA: And it lowers your blood sugar.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It helps you cope with stress.
DEBRA: Blood sugar too. It lowers blood sugar, if people have elevated blood sugar.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, just so many wonderful things.
DEBRA: We’re going to go to break, and when we come back, we’re going to talk more with Jane Hawley Stevens. She’s the founder of Four Elements Organic Herbs. Her website is FourElementsHerbals.com. And when we come back, we’re going to find out all about her farm and her plants.
We’ll be right back.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: I’m happy to be with you today, Debra.
DEBRA: Things happened during the break, and I have all the information just right here on a window on my computer screen. And if I’m looking at something else, and I come back during the break, it’s like, “What’s her name?”
Jane Hawley Stevens. And her website is FourElementsHerbals.com.
So you have this very large, certified organic farm. Tell us about your farm and about what it’s like to get certified organic. Why is that an important thing?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Well, my farm is situated in a beautiful area called the Baraboo Bluffs, which the Nature Conservancy considers one of the last great places because there are so many woodlands here that are undeveloped, mainly, because it’s very rocky.
So I have, I think, the good fortune of seeing wildlife up here like last Christmas, I got to see a cougar running on my way to my Christmas party, and we have really great wildlife.
So it’s really in the wild. It’s very beautiful and pristine that way. And I was fortunate enough to find this farm, one of the last good deals in the Bluffs, 130 acres.
At the time, I had already had my business, and I was certified organic in my other location of three acres. And really, this was such a gift to me because I was looking for just five acres or any place at all I could continue my business. But this was a place that I found and it was just because of the circumstances, I was able to get it for a really good deal.
So that’s very cool, and it’s just so beautiful, and like I said, pristine.
DEBRA: There’s a great picture of it on your website. Listeners, you should go to her website, FourElementsHerbals.com, and on the homepage, there’s a little slideshow, and one of them is her farm, and it’s just so beautiful.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, you can see how it’s surrounded by nature, not agriculture. So that’s a really good thing.
So my husband and I both have horticulture degrees from UW Madison, and so I also had this vision of having a small family farm, and it was my interest in herbs that grew into this line of herbal products.
We do grow the herbs that go into the products. We make teas, tinctures, creams, lip balms, soaps, salves, all different herbal products.
The Tea Project is a more demanding with the quantity of herbs, and I did find a certified organic herb farmer in Minnesota who has more equipment than I do. So I’m able to buy some of my herbs from him. But because my real passion is growing plants and also how they’re used, we still like to grow almost everything right here.
DEBRA: That’s just wonderful. I know having grown plants myself, herbs and flowers, and food, and even here in Florida, I have these little pots outside my backdoor where I grow various herbs like – culinary herbs I grow. So I’m not looking at them medicinally, but to have something like fresh parsley and fresh chives, and my very favorite, herb is pineapple sage.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It’s so pretty too.
DEBRA: It is, and I eat the flowers.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, they’d be beautiful in a salad too.
DEBRA: Yes, they are. I love pineapple sage. I love growing nasturtiums and then putting flowers in my salad, the nasturtium flowers that are so peppery.
I had some mustard plants in California when I lived in Northern California. In the springtime, they just have fields and fields of mustard. And I would eat the mustard flowers. And so, I actually grew some mustard flowers here and put them in my salad one spring.
And just having – listeners, if you never had this experience of growing your own food or herbs, or not going someplace where they’re growing them. I’ve had a lot of experience with that too, going to small farms and things where you can just eat the food or the herbs just right out of the buds.
It’s such a different experience than even if you go to a farmer’s market.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It is. And you really brought up a good point too about – you were mentioning that these were culinary herbs, but really, the culinary herbs have great medicine in them too.
We think of sage and thyme as being something that we season food with. But these are highly antiseptic plants that have a lot of activity in them.
One of my favorite remedies for a cold would be either sage or thyme tea, especially thyme helps to open the bronchioles.
So by growing even some culinary herbs, you’re going to get a lot of medicine out of that. Parsley is so full of vitamins and minerals. It’s really – if you buy any type of vegetable powders, you can add just your own fresh parsley into your drinks or your foods and have just a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals.
DEBRA: I think that there’s a difference between something that’s fresh and something that’s dry then powdered. There’s a vitality to it. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take them dried and powdered. But there’s a vitality to the freshness.
When I cut a piece of parsley and then it immediately goes in my salad. I just eat it, just eat those flowers of the pineapple sage. It just feels different.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It’s also very empowering to grow something of your own too. Even if you have a pot that you put – if you live in an apartment and put it outside someplace, by growing just a few herbs that you can use, it’s very empowering for you to be able to grow some of your own either food or herbs and use them.
I think there’s really great energy in that too, just the self-sufficiency of taking care of yourself in that way.
DEBRA: I also like – I agree with everything you said. I also like the process of knowing that I’m taking care of the plant that I’m watering it and I’m feeding it, and I know what goes into it, and then it produces something for me. It’s like a gift.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, it is a great interaction. That’s just such an important point about just the whole relationship of people and plants, how our culture has been getting more and more removed from plants since World War II and relying on store-bought stuff.
Even if you can go to nature and find something, have a proper ID book, and even collect some dandelion greens in a place that isn’t sprayed and add those to your salad, that’s a great digestive aid. And bitter, like I was saying before, which is so great for your digestive system. It can help with a lot of digestive issues by adding bitters to your salad and just finding some things that grow in the wild that you can properly identify.
DEBRA: When I lived in California, it was very easy to find those. Just as I would go for walks in the woods, I would learn what those were. It’s a lot more difficult here in Florida because I live in a suburban area. So the difference between living out in a rural area in Northern California and living in suburbia in Florida is amazingly different in terms of what and the original ecosystem is there. Not much here at all.
We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’ll talk more with Jane Hawley Stevens at Four Elements Organic Herbals. Her website is FourElementsHerbals.com.
We’ll be right back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jane Hawley Stevens. She’s the founder of Four Elements Organics Herbals at FourElementsHerbals.com.
Jane, tell us, what does Four Elements mean?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: The four elements are air, earth, fire and water. And of course, we use those a lot when we’re doing gardening and growing plants.
DEBRA: So there’s a Chinese system of four elements. Are you just referring to the four elements, or are you referring to the Chinese system?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: It’s not really the Chinese system because if it is was the Chinese system, I think they would have the fifth element of wood in there.
DEBRA: Yes, you’re absolutely right. So the four elements are traditional earth, air, fire and water that goes into the growing of all the things, all the plants.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: That’s right. That’s what we’re based on.
DEBRA: Okay, so if somebody is looking for an herbal product, what are some guidelines about how to choose a good one? Are there herbal products that don’t have any herbs in them for example?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: I think – and this is a big issue because the FDA is wanting – there’s some talk coming down the pipeline of every time somebody is – a manufacturer makes something with an herb, they’d have to take it to a lab to have it tested. But it does make sense if you’re just getting a powder from who knows what source, and you can’t identify it.
It’s different with me because I get the seeds, I grow the plant, I know what it looks like. And so I know I’m harvesting the exact gene or species that I want to work with. But I would – there are very reputable companies out there, but I like companies that are maybe smaller-owned in that the owner has a good reputation as an herbalist. It’s great if the person is growing their herbs and there are a few companies left like that too.
DEBRA: I agree with you. I know that – especially when I lived in California and it’s not so much available here in Florida. But I used to belong to community-supported agriculture, and so I could actually go to the farm where my food was being grown. I could work on the farm with the farmer if I wanted to. I could help harvest the food and put it in a basket.
So I knew exactly what was going on.
One of the things that is most distressing to me about the consumer world is that even as a consumer advocate, I can’t always find out what has gone into the product, whether it’s a food product or any other kind of product. And yet, if I were to decide that I wanted to buy one of your products, for example, I can just talk to you. I can send you an e-mail. I can pick up the phone and you can tell me all about it.
And you would.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: True. All of the ingredients that are in my products, you can read them. It’s not a long chemical name. It’s all simple ingredients that can be read easily. It’s just a real basic herbalism.
DEBRA: What’s your best-selling product?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Well, it’s called Look, No X Ma! and I designed it for my daughter. When she was just an infant, she developed eczema. And I really researched that situation really hard and came up with this one remedy that is, by far, my best-selling product. It floats my whole business really.
We also make a soap out of that same combination of herbs.
DEBRA: What’s another product that people like? If you didn’t have eczema, what would be a good, first basic product for someone to try if they don’t have any experience with herbs?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Well, I love the Rose Comfrey cream. So I have two comfrey creams, an unscented comfrey for the very chemically sensitive. It has very few ingredients in it. Another one of my top best-sellers is Calendula Neroli cream.
Down in Florida, you probably know how beautiful the orange blossoms smell. And that’s the scent when it’s distilled into a scent oil, orange blossoms mare called neroli.
So this is – calendula, bright, sunny, healing, calendula flowers. And then combined with that great scent of neroli, it makes a really lovely cream.
DEBRA: I’ll tell you when I first moved to Florida, my house is not a farm. It’s on a, what I would call, a large suburban lot. And so I have this beautiful backyard with all these trees, oak trees. And then when I moved here, there was an understory of citrus trees, different types of tangerines and grapefruits and oranges and things.
And there was a certain week in the spring when they would all bloom. And it was just so heavenly. You just go out in the backyard and have this gorgeous scent.
At that time, I was planning a wedding of my own, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get married just on those days when all the citrus trees are blooming?”
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Would that ever be nice? So gorgeous. And I just knew you were going to use the word heavenly when you described that smell.
DEBRA: It is. There’s just nothing like it. I just could breathe that all day long when those trees are blooming.
And that’s what nature is like. There’s nothing that duplicates. Nothing man-made that can duplicate that magic of nature, whether it’s the fragrance or the taste or the way it makes your body feel. It’s just a pretty incredible thing.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes, nature is here for us. Nature is here to heal us. I think it’s just so clear even to spend a time in a walk or watching the sunset, which is something that you have in Florida, either the sunrise or the sunset. All that beauty and majesty can really soothe us and help heal us and provide even an opportunity for our intuition to speak to us clearer.
Not to mention all the great plants that are out there that we have that are traditionally used or even have not yet been discovered their use.
In fact, that’s one definition of a weed, a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
DEBRA: Yes, I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that definition and I think that that’s right. I think all plants have virtues. We just need to find what they are. That sounds so lovely.
Are there a lot of non-organic herbs that – is there something about how herbs are processed that we should make sure we should get organic?
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Well, I think everything should be organic. We should have an organic plant as far as I’m concerned.
DEBRA: Yes, I agree.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: I wouldn’t really want to take medicine that’s been sprayed. It seems very counterintuitive to say the least, not to mention, there’s so much toxicity in fungicides and herbicides.
I was so happy to hear your message about glyphosates before the show. But yes, it’s really important to be certified organic too because you really have to prove in a lot of different ways to your inspector who comes every year about how well you’re keeping your products or your plants clean.
It really creates a great paper trail, which helps in a lot of other ways. You have to write down your daily chores and any off-farm inputs, anything that came from not on the farm that came onto the farm.
And so you have a great paper trail.
It is pricey but I think it’s worth paying to prove to people for that security that you are walking your talk. You’re not just saying it.
DEBRA: That’s right. I agree with that. I, of course, have heard the word organic for many years, but as a consumer advocate, I continue to research and learn more and educate myself as the years go by. Within the last few years, I’ve done a lot of research about what does organic really mean.
It means a lot more than just no pesticides, which is a big and fluent thing. But the whole process of certifying organic and all the things that you have to not only keep track of, but think about and consider that each one of those steps, each and everything that you do…
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Because you have to rebuild the soil. You have to take your soil out of production and put it into a cover crop every three years. And I think that’s really a beautiful thing because it just gives you a chance to honor and rebuild that soil in a way that you might not if you weren’t required to.
It’s so easy to just want to keep growing something either because you love growing something or just for the production sake of it.
They have a lot of good requirements.
DEBRA: I think so too.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: There are all different certifying agencies but it’s a very worthwhile thing to just assure people that you are walking your talk.
DEBRA: I think it would be great if all products of all types had that same kind of structure that required reporting and record-keeping, and all of those things so that – every product has a story, and if everyone could tell the story of their product to the customer, I think that would be incredible.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: Yes. A great idea while you’re saying that, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you would have to prove if you sprayed chemicals and all the organic people wouldn’t have to go through all of that.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. I totally agree with you.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: And then, the people who spray all the chemicals, they don’t have to go through all the paperwork and prove it and pay the fees.
DEBRA: I often say that a label shouldn’t say organic apple sauce. It’s the other apple sauce. It should say apples and pesticides.
JANE HAWLEY STEVENS: There you go. Someday, we can create a vision here.
DEBRA: Yes. Well, thank you so much for being with me, Jane. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you. And again, Jane’s website is FourElementsHerbals.com. And you should just go there and see how beautiful her farm is, and how beautiful her plants are.
I’m just so happy that we talked.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out who’s going to be on for the rest of the week. Also, you can listen to any of the 200-plus past shows. They’re all archived and some are even transcribed.
Be well.