Podcast 240: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 1): Psyllium, Elderberry, Turmeric, Ashwagandha

This episode begins an intermittent series we’ll be doing this year, covering the top-selling herbs in the United States and giving you our thoughts about them. From the perspective of a practicing herbalist, these herbs are frequently pigeon-holed into very narrow ranges of application – the “what is it good for” answers are quite limited! On the other hand, they’re very popular remedies, so it’s important for us to be familiar with them.

The Herbal Market Report from the American Botanical Council comes out every year, with data about herbal supplement sales for the prior year. Check it out and take a look at the “mainstream” and “natural channel” best-seller lists – you might be surprised at what’s on there!

If you’re an herbalist, you should be well-educated about the herbs people take most frequently. You should know what’s popular, and why. You should know how to talk to people about these herbs, how to correct misconceptions, how to offer more effective alternatives, and which ones are worth the money. We’re hoping this series will help you do that!

If you’re new to herbalism – yay, we get first crack at forming your opinion of these herbs! 😄 More importantly, this will serve as an introduction to marketing literacy in the realm of herbal supplements, as well as some good materia medica study.

In today’s episode we cover psyllium, elder berry, turmeric, and ashwagandha.

1. Psyllium – Plantago ovata

• HHP 205: Herbs A-Z: Pinus & Plantago
• Plantain: Herb of the Week

2. Elder berry – Sambucus nigra, S. canadensis

• Elder: Herb of the Week
• HHP 216: Herbs A-Z: Sambucus & Sassafras
• Elderberry and Cytokine Storms

3. Turmeric – Curcuma longa

• HHP 184: Herbs A-Z: Crataegus & Curcuma
• HHP 149: Our Top Topical Herbs for Acne

4. Ashwagandha – Withania somnifera

• HHP 226: Herbs A-Z: Withania & Zanthoxylum
• Ashwagandha: Herb of the Week
• HHP 155: Equinox Thoughts On Balance & Amphoteric Herbs

Whether you’re a brand-new beginner or an herbalist with experience, it’s always helpful to study the herbs in depth! Our comprehensive presentation of herbal allies is in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. It includes detailed profiles of 100 medicinal herbs!

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

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

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Ryn (00:00:12):
Hi, I’m Ryn. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts, and on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast. This week I am flying solo, and I’m doing a presentation for you about how herbalist look at, and work with, and think about some of the top selling herbs or the best-selling herbs in a commercial context. So, at the grocery store, at a supplement shop, online sales, things like that. What are the products that people are buying the most of and why? What are they doing with them? And do the people who sell those products, those supplements, those items market them the same way that herbalist think about them in a traditional context or in the context of contemporary herbalism, the way we work now. Those are some of the topics that we’re going to be addressing here today.

Ryn (00:01:10):
So, before I jump in, I just want to give a quick reminder that we are not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators. The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So, these discussions are for educational purposes only. We want to remind everybody that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for every person. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, keep in mind that we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic, right way that you should adhere to. Everyone’s body is different. So, the things we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope they’ll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. This doesn’t mean you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether it’s discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make.

Why This Topic at All?

Ryn (00:02:15):
All right, so why this topic at all? The interest in this for me kind of began when we started teaching pharmacy students. If you’ve been a follower of the podcast for a while, then you may know already that in addition to our own online herb school, which you can find@commonwealthherbs.com, in addition to that, one of the things we do for work is we teach what are called APPE rotations: A-P-P-E, Advanced Pharmacy Practicum Experience. And so these are students who are in their sixth year of training in pharmacy school. And they can take an elective and spend six weeks learning herbalism from us. And so we’ve done that in different ways over the years, but it’s been a long-term thing. And starting like 11, 12 years ago is when we began with that. And talking to those students and thinking about what their career was going to be like. Just realizing that there’s a lot of herbs that are very popular commercially speaking but weren’t actually super important to our clinical practice. Or they weren’t herbs that we personally, ourselves, like me and Katja, focused on very much in the work we do. And then others that we know very, very well and work with very, very frequently, oftentimes in quite different ways, or other, or expanded, or additional ways in comparison to the ones that are promoted in the product packaging or in kind of marketing terminology.

Ryn (00:03:57):
So, I started talking to those pharmacy students, or we both did really, talking to them about those plants. And talking about the way that we think about them and how to compare and contrast that to the kind of commercial presentations for the plants. And in most cases, really just to try to expand away from something that’s been pigeonholed, right? Take this herb for that problem. Take turmeric for inflammation or take it for joint pain. Take this one as a laxative. Take this one as an immune booster. And trying to teach traditional herbalism, which sees these plants as much broader than any single effect or any single action like those. And as time has gone on, I’ve gotten interested in this topic even further, and tried to get a broader sense of what’s going on with herbalism in this commercial realm. Again, what are the plants that are most popular or that people are most excited about? And also how that changes based on world events. For instance, when COVID came around, there was suddenly a greater than usual increase of interest in elderberry and other immune herbs and remedies for obvious reasons, right? But we do see shifts in the herbs that are most popular or most well sold, I guess you could say, over the years and as time goes by. One of the key things that has been helpful in tracking this kind of information is a market report. It’s the Herbal Market Report. It’s put out by the American Botanical Council. And it comes out every year. And there they have data about herbal supplement sales for the prior year. And that’s something that I’ve been following for a long time and always interested to see. Like oh, what’s the number one herb this year? And how is elderberry doing? Did ashwagandha go up or down in the rankings, you know, stuff like that. So, it’s an interesting report, and I’ve got a link to it in the show notes. And it’ll be good as you listen to this episode and others because this is going to become a series of episodes. I’m not going to cover everything today. But as you listen to these, it’ll be good to have looked at the report, checked out the lists at least.

Ryn (00:06:23):
When you look at it, you’ll notice a couple of things that they include in there. One of them is that there’s actually two lists. One is the so-called mainstream channel, and then the other is the so-called natural channel. And we’ll talk about the differences between those in a minute. But again, it is an interesting way to see what people are buying, what people are wanting. And to step back a moment, the reason to investigate this, and the reason I wanted to do this series of podcast episodes is essentially this. If you’re an herbalist, you should be familiar with the herbs that people take most frequently. You should be familiar with the ones that are popular. You should know what is popular and why. What is drawing people to that plant or that product, right? What is convincing people that this is worth taking, that this is going to help them? And what does that say about what people are experiencing, what people are worried about, and what people are coping with in their lives. You should also be able to talk to people about these popular plants for a couple of reasons. One is to make sure that they understand what they’re actually taking or to guide them towards better quality products. In a lot of cases that’s quite necessary. It can also be to correct misconceptions that people may have about certain plants or supplements and how they work. What kind of things they can or can’t do in the body? What kind of safety profile they have or risks that they may have? So, all of those are really important to be able to express to a client or somebody that you’re consulting for.

Ryn (00:08:07):
You may also find ways to offer more effective alternatives to an individual person. Because again, they may be taking a supplement because they’ve heard it’s good for fill-in-the-blank, right? I’m taking this because I heard it was good for high blood pressure. I’m taking this because I heard it was good for cognitive function. And you as an herbalist, especially if you’re well-trained, you might be able to say okay, I can see why that would interest you, and why that herb is popular for that purpose. But for your body, for your constitution, for your particular state of being, I think this other herb or this formula would actually serve you better. So, that’s something that we can do for our clients that’s really, really helpful for them. And you know that kind of dovetails with one other element there, which is which supplements are actually worth the money and which ones may not be? Especially when there are questions of accessibility and affordability for a given person’s budget.

Limits to the Herbal Market Report

Ryn (00:09:08):
All right. So, those are some of the ideas that we’re going to be touching on as we go through this sequence of episodes. I think we’re going to be weaving these in and out with other types of content for a while here as we go forward. But looking back to the Herbal Market Report – if you want to open that in a tab, or check it out as we go along here, or pause and poke through it -a couple things I want to draw out right up at the beginning here. So, first of all, sales of herbal supplements are pretty large, okay? The estimate for the year 2023, the year we have data from here, is that Americans spent about $12.5 billion on herbal supplements in that year. And it’s worth noting that that is only about supplements. We’re not including a number of things here that may have herbs in them, right? So, things like cosmetics, but also personal care items like lotions, and skin restore salves, and things like that wouldn’t be included under this particular investigation. Herbal products like an herbal tea or tea bags, and then prepared herbal teas or beverages or things like that, also not included here. When herbs are as an ingredient in a food item, whether it’s a snack food, or a little prepared meal, or whatever, that’s not included. And then there’s a couple of places where herbs or their extracts can show up in a commercial product, but it’s in the category of over-the-counter drug rather than the category of supplement. So, a couple examples there. Psyllium husk, which is one of the herbs we’re going to address today. Psyllium husk can be sold as an herbal supplement by itself or in formulation, but it can also be sold as an over-the-counter drug. And in that situation, the drug category there is bulk laxative or bulking laxative. There are other kinds of fiber product that could be sold that way, which you may or may not consider herbal. Like some Metamucil products, for instance, are actually made up with corn fiber. Others are made with psyllium husk. There’s a variety of different things. But those, again, they may be categorized as supplement. They may be categorized as over-the-counter drug. And in the latter case, that sale is not counted in this particular report.

Ryn (00:11:35):
Another example of an herb that can show up as an OTC med is senna. So, senna is an herb. And there can be herbal products of it, supplements that can be categorized that way. But sometimes senna or its extracts are included in an over-the-counter drug product as a stimulant laxative, which is what that herb does. It causes the intestinal peristalsis, and it empties the bowels. But anyway, that can be in that group. And then caffeine extracts, like it could be a coffee extract or a tea extract, same situation. It could be sold as a supplement. It could also be sold as an over-the-counter drug. In this case, the drug category is alertness aid. Okay. So, just to say, there’s a few cases like that where depending on the manufacturer, or how they decide to sell their product, what route they go, they may be in one or the other category.

Ryn (00:12:30):
The other thing about these lists, the top seller lists in the market report here. So, there’s the overall sales. And like I said, that was about 12 and a half billion dollars in 2023. But they break that up into what they call channels, right or groups of stores or types of store, types of retailer. And so there’s the mainstream channel, which is like grocery stores, drug stores, dollar stores, convenience stores, things like this. The ones that you would just think of as being more mainstream rather than specialty, or niche, or whatever. Sales there were about two and a half billion dollars, right? $3 billion was in the natural and health food and specialty retail, or the so-called natural channel. But then $7 billion, right, which is more than those two put up together. 7 billion was in direct sales. And direct sales here includes buying off of Amazon. Buying online from someplace like walmart.com if you were to ever do that. Also multi-level marketing companies where you might buy from a representative who’s also a mid-level person in that pyramid situation. Direct sales, like from a company who makes the product straight through their website to people. And then sales through a health practitioner, right? Like there might be a naturopath that has a wholesale deal with some supplement company. And they sell them to their patients or to their clients at a reduced rate or something like that. So, the thing about this report and the top seller is all of that category, the direct sales – Amazon websites, MLM stuff, all of that – those are not included here. And I am very curious about how that would adjust which herbs are at which point or which ranking on the list. But it’s obviously difficult data to get or to collate together. And that would require a bunch of individual companies to share a lot of granular data about what they’re doing. So, there’s some limitations on what data we can get about that. But just to be clear, these lists here are about what’s called the mainstream channel and the natural channel. Most of this series is going to be about the mainstream list. Because a lot of herbs show up on both of them, and so we’ll just address them in the order they turn up. But towards the end of this sequence of episodes, there will be a few bits about some herbs that show up on the natural channel but not the mainstream one. Because there are a few differences in ranking and in membership between them.

The Mainstream Channel: #1 Psyllium

Ryn (00:15:16):
All right. So, we’re going to start today with, again, the mainstream channel. And like I said, that’s like grocery stores, drug stores, dollar stores, convenience stores. But this isn’t going to include places like Whole Foods and Sprouts or other natural or specialty shops like that. Okay? So, on this list, the number one herb is psyllium. And psyllium is the seed of a species of plantain. Usually it’s gotten from Plantago ovata. That’s a species of plantain that makes a lot of seeds. They’re quite large and easy to harvest. And so it’s the simplest one to do for this. So, psyllium has actually been in the number one spot on these lists for two years now. Prior to that it was actually much lower on the ranking. But it has moved up in just the last couple of years. As I mentioned, that’s always one of the things I’m looking for when I see the report each year. So, who went up, who went down? How many spots? What does that reflect in terms of changes in the interests among people for that plant? So, psyllium husk is essentially sold as a fiber supplement, right? And I mentioned earlier that it’s sometimes found in over-the-counter bulk laxative drug products, and that sales for those aren’t included here. Despite that, this herb is still at the top of the list, right? And so the thing that people are focused on and marketing around is the fiber content, both soluble and insoluble fiber. With psyllium, it’s more soluble fiber than insoluble. A tablespoon of powdered psyllium husk, it weighs about nine grams total. Seven grams of that is fiber content. And of that, six grams is the soluble fiber, and one gram is the insoluble fiber. This is a pretty nice balance, honestly, when it comes to gut health. And so this is a friendly source for that kind of thing.

Ryn (00:17:35):
Fiber products like this – soluble, insoluble, the mix – have been studied primarily for gastrointestinal upsets and more than anything else for constipation. Psyllium husk is really well proven as an effective remedy for constipation. Sometimes the efficacy depends on dose. And if people take too little, they don’t get much of a benefit, or it’s not as noticeable as it could be. In some investigations, this has been found to be… Tested alongside a number of other remedies and found to be one of the most effective things, as long as the dose was high enough. Sometimes that requires a dose of like 10 grams of the psyllium husk per day. So again, a whole tablespoon of powder can get you there. Somebody may take that all in one dose together, or they may divide it up in little doses through the day. But one key thing, whenever somebody’s working with psyllium husk. And any product you look at is going to have a bunch of labels or a bunch of boxes on it to stress this. Is that you’ve got to take it with water, and with a lot of water is better, right? So, you wouldn’t want somebody to just take dry psyllium husk powder, put it in their mouth, and swallow it down. Because well, it’s going to absorb the water of your digestive system, and it’s going to swell up there. And if you were to swallow a whole bunch of dry powder, it could swell up in your stomach and kind of make a lump. That’s not really going to move. It’s a bad situation to be in. You don’t want to set yourself up for that. So, if someone’s taking a whole tablespoon of powdered psyllium, they’re going to want at least 12 ounces of water right there with it to stir it in. And then it’s best to drink even more water afterwards. You don’t have to take whole tablespoon doses to get some benefit from it. There’s plenty of benefit to be had from a teaspoon dose, or a heaping teaspoon, or something like that. Maybe you do it twice a day if this is your only source of fiber. But listen, it really shouldn’t be, right, and that’s worth noting here. That when we talk about providing seven or maybe eight grams of fiber content to you in a significant dose of this product, this powdered psyllium husk, let’s compare that to a couple foods, right?

Ryn (00:19:44):
So, in our Digestive Health course, if you’re one of our students, if you’re in that course, then look for the fiber PDF. It’s in the overall digestive health chapter in that course. And Katja has made a really excellent chart of a bunch of food items and the amount of fiber that they can provide to you. Also some herb items, by the way. Like if you get cooked nettles, and you have a cup of them, that gets you six grams of fiber, right? So, I’m not going to read a bunch of numbers, but let’s just say a few numbers, right? If you eat a whole avocado, that’ll give you 10 grams of fiber. Hey, that’s at least as good as that supplementary dose of psyllium husk. Or if you eat a cup of blackberries, that gets you eight grams of fiber. Just a quarter cup of almonds will give you four grams. Or if you cook butternut squash, and you eat a cup of that, nine grams of fiber, right? So, the takeaway message here is that whole foods, actual fruits and vegetables, they are your best, they are your biggest source of fiber. Unless you eat a very standard American diet or a SAD American diet, in which there may be lots of processed food, lots of packaged food, maybe restaurant food. But there could be minimal vegetable content. There could be lots of flour, and it may be refined instead of whole flour or grains, that kind of thing. And so those foods can be really low in fiber. And it’s actually possible for people to have an extremely low fiber diet without intending to do so. I’m not talking about people who do that purposefully because of small intestine bacterial overgrowth or other digestive problems. But just somebody who falls into a diet that has low fiber content. That person is going to get a significant amount of benefit from working with something like psyllium husk as a fiber supplement, right? And that might be a bridge strategy as we do some work to alter the kind of foods that they buy and prepare, or how they cook, or what kind of things they eat primarily. But for other people, this may just be a way to help them get up a little bit further in terms of fiber intake.

Ryn (00:22:06):
Like I mentioned, psyllium has been studied for a number of digestive upsets. Its results for constipation are the best. For other things the results may be a little bit mixed, right? One example is inflammatory bowel disease, which is a broad category, and we can label a bunch of other conditions underneath that. But it is exactly what it sounds like. You’ve got inflammation in your bowels, and it’s causing upset, right? So, in studies that have looked at that with psyllium husk, the results are mixed. Some seem good, some seem not so good. To me what that means is that this label, inflammatory bowel disease, is actually broadly capturing a bunch of diverse conditions, and not all of them are addressed much by fiber. Some of them, yes. And those are the ones where it worked out well. But others not so much. And there’d be a different approach we need, like focusing on restoration of gut integrity, or improving vitamin D status to try to lock down the tight junctions a bit, or other methods that we might, we might draw on. One thing to note about psyllium husk is that it’s not only marketed for digestive health anymore. There’s been a shift sometime in the last few years where you’re seeing it marketed for cardiovascular health as well, and then a sort of very general wellness claim. Supports wellness, right? So, that’s very broad. But there has been much greater interest in psyllium as a cardiovascular health product in recent years.

Fiber Benefits & Plantago Leaf

Ryn (00:23:40):
And if you’re thinking of it in the digestive system and the fiber content, you may be wondering where, what, how, why would that help? The simple understanding here is that when we consume fiber, it can capture and bind up bile that has been secreted by the liver and the gallbladder into the intestine. So, it can get bound up into the fiber and then eliminated out of your body. This is a good thing because when that doesn’t happen, if we have a low fiber diet, that bile can get reabsorbed, right? So, instead of getting squirted out, and helping with digestion, and moving things along in the guts, and then leaving your body, it can get reabsorbed. And when that happens, that’s one of the things that leads to problems with the gallbladder, like gallstones. It can lead to liver issues. And it can also lead to a greater reabsorption, not just of the bile, but of cholesterol itself, right? That can also get bound up with the fiber and eliminated. But if there’s insufficient fiber, that cholesterol might itself get reabsorbed and come back into the system. So, what’s been found when this has been studied. They have people take the fiber supplement every day for a month or however long, and they measure their cholesterol levels before and after. You find that with psyllium supplementation, you can see reductions in total cholesterol and in LDL, but not in HDL and not usually in triglycerides either. All of this is really pretty consistent when it comes to the effects of fiber-rich foods or supplementation with fiber on these blood lipids or these fatty substances that move in the blood and circulate through the body. So, just capturing the bile, capturing the cholesterol, eliminating it with the feces is a major way that a fiber supplement like psyllium can improve your blood parameters there.

Ryn (00:25:57):
There’s another aspect to it though, which is prebiotic effects. So, altering the gut flora in a positive way by feeding them essentially, right? Some of that soluble fiber is food for some of your friendly gut flora. So, you feed them. They take care of you. And that includes with digestive and eliminative functions as well. And so that also aids in bringing the so-called bad cholesterol, bringing that down, right? And part of the benefit that those microbes can have is that they can take some of that fiber, they consume it, they ferment it, and they convert it into short-chain fatty acids. Then your body can absorb and utilize those and burn them as a really clean energy source. Yep. So, that’s pretty nice. Alongside those improvements in cholesterol numbers, people have often seen, or studies have shown improvements in your blood sugar level, especially fasting blood sugar levels. The HbA1c reading, which is a sort of a measurement of a longer-term state of your body in terms of blood sugar regulation. And then even in blood pressure as well, systolic blood pressure in particular.

Ryn (00:27:12):
So, all of those things are great, but again, just keep in mind whenever someone’s talking about the health benefits of psyllium, that if this person was to eat a couple of cups of leafy green veggies every day. If they were to increase their intake of certain nuts. If they were to have a lot more blackberries and raspberries in their life. Those would also increase the fiber content of their diet, of their intake. And we would expect these same kind of benefits. So, just to say it’s a supplement, it’s not a necessity. You don’t have a psyllium deficiency. You may have a fiber deficiency, and psyllium may be a good way to fill that in or cover the gap. But there are other ways to accomplish it. I just like to make that clear. All right. One other small note, a couple of the psyllium husk products, the ones where they’re ground to a powder, they’ll also say oh, you can use this as an egg replacement. Like if you take a teaspoon of this powder, it replaces one egg in your baking. I’m not a great baker, but I’ve given this a try a couple of times. And my read on it is eh, kinda. You can try it out. If you’ve got a lovely recipe that involves this for that purpose, let me know. But my results weren’t fantastic. Yeah, We’ll see. All right, so we’ve been talking a lot about the commercial presentation, and the popularization of it, and so on. But let’s step back a little, and be herbalists here, and say we’re talking about psyllium. We’re talking about Plantago ovata.

Ryn (00:28:47):
So, it’s Plantago. It’s a plantain, right? Not the banana thing, but plantain, the little ground herb, the little green leafy rosette on the ground. And then the spike of the stem that grows up and makes the seeds. So, if we focus on the seed first, other Plantago species, including Plantago major and Plantago lanceolata, these are the two most common plantain species where I live in New England. You can gather the seeds from there. You could grind them into powder. You can take them as a fiber supplement if you want to. Nothing to stop you from doing it. The ovata, like I said, it just makes more seeds. It’s easier to gather, and that’s why it’s grown for that purpose. But herbalist, we know plantain, Plantago, primarily for the leaf rather than the seeds. And plantain leaf is a fantastic remedy. I mean, it has a ton of benefits starting as a wound healer. And that can be topical. That can also be internal if we have ulcerations, or wounds, or just the degree of inflammation that can affect your digestive system. Plantain leaf is a really excellent remedy for soothing that, healing that, reducing inflammation, reducing excessive permeability in the mucous membranes, all the way through. So, it really is one of our primary digestive remedy herbs. One of the nice things is that as it’s soothing the entire GI tract and all the mucous membranes there, it also has some positive anti-inflammatory benefits on your liver. And it’s what we call a hepatoprotective herb in that regard. So, that kind of adds an extra layer to support for digestive organs, but kind of broadens the activity there in terms of your eliminative functions as well.

Ryn (00:30:42):
So, we could talk for a long time about plantain, and in fact, we have. So, for further discussion of plantain from an herbalist’s perspective, I want to point you back to episode 205. That was where we talked about pine and also plantain together. And I’ll put a link in the show notes for that one. But just to say the biggest difference I think, the simplest way to say a difference between commercial presentation of Plantago plants, and the way herbalist think about them, is what part do we work with, right? And what kind of activities are we getting? When you take the leaf, it’s not so much about fiber content. It’s more about a little bit of mucilage, a little bit of tannins, a couple of particular plant constituents that plantain makes a lot of, like allantoin and aucubin. And these have these beneficial effects on your gut integrity, some impacts on gut flora as well. But they’re different from the provision of fiber itself. They could certainly complement each other. Nothing to stop you from making plantain leaf tea and putting psyllium seed powder into it. You could be having a little family reunion if you want to. Yeah. All right, so that’s, that’s psyllium.

The Mainstream Channel: #2 Elderberry

Ryn (00:32:01):
Number two on the mainstream bestsellers list is elder and specifically elderberry. Looking here at Sambucus nigra and Sambucus canadensis, elderberry. Hmm. Elderberry had a big bump in sales, like I mentioned earlier, in COVID. Particularly in the sales numbers for the year 2020, there was a massive jump from where elder had been. Now elder in prior years it had been on the bestseller list, but it was like middle of the pack somewhere, right? When SARS COVID-19 came around, and as the pandemic was rolling on, the interest in that, people were looking for antiviral herbs. Looking for herbs that are well regarded as being helpful for respiratory infection. Elderberry is the most obvious candidate with that. Because elderberry has been popular, very popular, as a cold and especially as an influenza remedy, well, for a really long time actually. Back to historical times, back to prehistory, I imagine. So, there was a big leap there, and there’s been some regression since then. Sales in the year 2023 of elderberry products declined by about 28% from the prior year. So, it’s just a regression towards the baseline there. In the modern context, elderberry is sold in a bunch of different ways. Syrups are one of the more traditional ways, and one of the better studied ways to take elderberry as well. Capsules and tablets have been around for a while, tinctures and glycerites, of course. And those are not as popular, the tincture, the glycerite. Those formats are not as popular out there in the general public. Maybe more familiar to you if you’re an herbalist or going to herb shops or apothecary shops and seeing whole lines of tinctures there. But it’s worth saying that gummies have become very popular. And the kind of development and expansion of gummy herbal supplement products in the past 10ish years or so has accelerated and has also brought a lot of increased attention to certain herbs or other supplement items than they previously had.

Ryn (00:34:25):
I don’t think we’ll get to it today, but when we get to apple cider vinegar, that one had a really, really big increase in sales once gummies started to be available. So, anyway, elderberry gummies are quite popular. And you’ll see a lot of them if you go to Amazon, or Vitacost, or something like that. So, elderberry, of course, is marketed for immune support, right? And if you ever wonder why there are these kind of vague claims, it goes to the law about what defines a supplement in the United States, and what types of claims they’re allowed to make on the labels. And so the general rule, which has had some complications recently, the general rule has been that you’re allowed to make what are called structure and function claims. So, for a supplement you can’t say this elderberry supplement kills the flu virus. Even if you can prove that it does in a Petri dish, or you’ve got some lab studies that back up the claim, you can’t say that kind of thing in the US. Instead, you have to say it supports immune health. So, that’s what people do, right? And so elderberry gets marketed for immune support. And then, you know, the way I would put this is that it does get marketed for cold, for flu, for COVID by any available terminology. And depending on the manufacturer and how closely they hew to the rules, that could be that they just leave it at immune support. In some cases there are other makers, or smaller scale providers, or things like that who might be playing a little more freely with the terminology. And so, just that is the impression people have. That idea is kind of already out there in the world. And so that’s part of the draw, that’s part of the popularity, right?

Ryn (00:36:13):
One thing I want to make a special note about when it comes to elderberry, and products for immune support, and that kind of thing. Is that occasionally you’ll go, and you’ll look at an elderberry product. And right there on the box it will say take for cold and flu. Works for cough, and sneezing, and runny nose, and fever, and aches, and pains. Now, if you see that, look at the box a little more closely. And you’ll probably see the word homeopathic written on it. Because homeopathic products are regulated differently from herbal supplements and other supplements, vitamins, and minerals, and so on. They’re regulated differently here in the US. So, if you’re selling a homeopathic product, there are certain disease claims or symptom names that you are allowed to put on your label. But you’re not allowed to do that if it’s what I would call a full-strength herbal supplement or herbal product, right? The reason this matters is that a homeopathic product and a supplement product are very different from each other. One simple way to see that is that a homeopathic product could be a little white tablet. Any extract of elderberry that has its active chemistry in it is going to be purple because the active chemistry is purple, right? I mean, there’s a lot of active chemistries you could say in elderberry. But the anthocyanins are a big part of what does the job of helping your body fight off cold and flu and other infections like that. And they are purple. They are the pigment. They’re the pigment and the medicine together. It’s the same thing. And so if we have a product, and it’s a clear liquid or a white powder, that’s not elderberry chemistry. That’s something else. Homeopathic products, of course, are made in a process which dilutes the original substance to such a point that there’s probably no molecules of that original substance left in the finished product. So, I mention this in the context of elderberry. It does apply to other supplements as well. You might see homeopathic turmeric products out there, or homeopathic ashwagandha, or whatever.

Ryn (00:38:29):
But elderberry, they’re more common. And it’s even worth noting here that sometimes the same brand, including very popular brands, can produce products in both categories. They make a homeopathic line over here, and they make a full-strength supplement line – capsules, or gummies, or syrups, or whatever – over here. One brand we can name that does both of those, is probably the most popular elderberry brand out there, Sambucol. So, Sambucol has been in the elderberry game for a long time. They’ve run and funded a number of studies into its efficacy, like the efficacy of their own elderberry syrup against flu and some other respiratory viruses. And the data’s actually good even though it is yes, corporate funded. So anyway, you can go to Amazon right now. If you just type in Sambucol, the first row of results will probably include two or three homeopathic products, and then two or three actual supplements, syrup, or gummy, or something like that. For you as an herbalist, I just want you to be very, very capable of differentiating homeopathic versus supplement products when it comes to elderberry. If somebody loves homeopathy, and that’s what they want. That’s what they want, great. But a lot of people don’t know the difference, right? They’ve maybe heard this phrase, herbal and homeopathic remedies, right? And they don’t understand that there’s a massive difference between them in terms of what you actually consume, right? If you have an elderberry tincture over here and an elderberry homeopathic liquid over here. Well, like I said, the tincture will be purple. It will have anthocyanins. It will have other elder chemistry in it. The homeopathic, it will be a clear liquid with probably no actual molecules from it. So, I’ll be agnostic today about which one is best for any individual given person. Clearly my preference is for the actual supplements and products, and that’s what I like to work with. But again, I just want you, dear listener, to be very capable of making that differentiation and passing that knowledge on to people that you work with.

More Than Immune Support & Elder Parts

Ryn (00:40:42):
All right. So, this is a case where the kind of marketing about elderberry is not wrong, but it is constrained a bit, right? Elderberry is indeed an excellent immune support herb. It can heighten your immune responses and reactions to an illness. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s best to take it early on in the illness. If you’ve been sick for three or four days, adding elderberry at that point isn’t necessarily going to do a whole lot for you. The earlier, the better. And don’t be shy about dose size when it’s early on either. That’s my advice to you about elder remedies. Elder can heighten surveillance. Some folks like to take elder through the whole cold and flu season as a way to kind of boost up their resistance there. I prefer other herbs for that. Things like astragalus, codonopsis. But it’s not a wholly wrong way to work with elderberry. It is an expensive way to work with elderberry if you’ve got good quality products, though. So, that’s worth considering. But the thing is, elderberry is more than that, right? It’s more than cold and flu and COVID. It’s more than immune boosting. Elder is a richly pigmented, nutritive berry, right? It is an anti-inflammatory remedy from that perspective. And that does feed into its actions on the immune system. Elderberry has a complicated effect on immunity, because immunity is complicated. It’s not on or off or active or quiet. There are many branches, and arms, and members of the immune system. And elderberry activates some of them and calms down some of them. The net effect is that it tends to make our passage through an illness much smoother and much easier.

Ryn (00:42:32):
But sometimes that information can be misinterpreted. Because somebody may zoom in one cytokine, one inflammatory messenger that elderberry does upregulate in the body. And we’ve seen people get really anxious about that, and worry about cytokine storm, and things like this. And that’s not a realistic worry. I’ve got a reference – I’ll put it in the show notes for you – about elderberry and cytokine storm, just in case that meme kind of floated past your brain at some point. We can put that one to rest. But I think it is worth thinking about elderberry in that broader context of inflammation, which has a huge component to the immune response, right? A lot of our immune response is inflammatory. But that’s not the whole of the immune response, and that’s not the whole of the inflammatory response in our body. So anyway, elderberry is worth considering there. It’s also got lymphatic actions to it. It’s also got diuretic actions to it. And those might be very helpful for a given person. We might say all right, you have a diet that’s very beige. I want to get you some pigments. I want to get you some vitamin purple. You’ve got stuck fluids in your body. I want to move your lymph. I want to drain some fluid from the kidney. So, elder can accomplish all of those. We don’t need to be like well, elder can do some immune stuff. But then I need nettle for a diuretic, and I need calendula for a lymphatic. Don’t underestimate elder, right? It has these capacities to it. And you know, when we set all of those aside each other, we can see where elder is one of those exemplars of the herbalists’ category alterative, right? Alterative is a big umbrella category. There’s lots of subcomponents to that. Alterative is about improving the quality of circulating fluids in your body. And you can do that in different ways. Elder is doing that through nutritive ways, through lymphatic ways, diuretic ways. And then yeah, inflammation mitigation and immune modulation. Those are all happening at the same time. And so I think when you see it from that perspective, you can understand why elder is such a classic alterative agent. And it really does deserve a place in those kind of formulas. These days a lot of times that approach is looked at under the idea of detox. But that’s actually a fairly impoverished way to look at it in comparison to the traditional approach. So, I think that’s why people focus so much on strong laxative agents and not quite enough, as far as I’m concerned, on plants like elderberry. All right.

Ryn (00:45:11):
Now from the herbalists’ perspective, elder is also not only the berry, right? So, other parts of elder, in my experience anyway, are rarely or almost never – depending on which part – found in supplement products in commerce these days. Elderflower might turn up here and there. I mean, certainly you can find elderflower liqueur, like St-Germain is a nice one. You can see elderberry turn up in… sorry, elderflower turn up in some tea formulations and blends. Certainly some body care products, and skincare, and stuff like that, elderflower can turn up there. And that does track with traditional ways of working with it as well as a topical remedy for skin tonification and that sort of thing. We see elderflower also being a relaxant diaphoretic to release pent up heat from the body. Both physical heat, like a fever. And you as the herbalist, you may be familiar with elderflower as a nice remedy for releasing the heat of a fever when we want to do that. But Katja and I are also very interested in relaxant diaphoretics from a nervous system or an emotional perspective. Talking about them as emotional diaphoretics to release hot emotions and pent-up frustration and agitation. And I’d say for our own practice, that’s one of the key indicators for elderflower that drives our work. And so that’s bringing it into that nervine category and seeing some actions over there.

Ryn (00:46:49):
There are a couple other parts that you won’t see – at least I hope not, honestly – in supplement products. And if you do, look askance upon them is what I would tell you. But so the leaf, elder leaf, no thanks. So, there’s supposedly some antiviral activity to be found in elder leaf. But as far as I can see, the activity of the antiviral proteins in elder leaf have been overstated in terms of practical application. And the reason is that the margin between a safe and comfortable dose of elder leaf and purgative and cathartic dose – like get all the stuff out of you from both ends of you – the difference between those doses is quite small and variable from person to person. So, I think you’re more likely to cause somebody to vomit and have uncomfortable diarrhea than you are to boost up their immune fighting effect. This is a case, like many others, where some antimicrobial or particularly antiviral activity of a plant can be identified in a Petri dish. Take an extract of this plant, squirt it onto some viruses crawling around in there, and we can see them die. But taking it in your mouth, having it circulate through your body, and reaching the place in your body where those viruses are. Reaching there at a concentration strong enough to do that to them is not very likely, and also very uncomfortable along the way. So, I’m not real keen on elder leaf taken orally for these kind of purposes. I do know some herbalists who like to work with elder leaf topically though including in wound care blends, both open wounds and then closed wounds like a contusion, something like that. And there that’s another way to bring in some anti-inflammatory action less than a viral focus. But that’s a different kind of a thing. And that may be worth doing, but even among herbalists I speak to that’s fairly rare. And then elder bark, basically all that same stuff but even more so. Elder bark is going to have a purgative effect. And I guess if you really, really want one, you can play around with that. But I’m not very interested in that, thank you. I think that’s about all I need to say there. So, in the show notes I do have a reference to episode 216. That’s the one where we talked about elderberry. That one we also discussed sassafras, because they were next to each other in the alphabet. But you can check that out if you want. More discussion about elder as an herbal medicine.

The Mainstream Channel: #3 Turmeric

Ryn (00:49:31):
All right. Let’s do two more today. So, number three on the mainstream list is turmeric. And this one is number three on the mainstream list. It’s number one on the natural list for 2023. And in both of them it’s been up near the top, like the top four or five I’d say, for the past several years. And you’re probably not surprised by that. If you’re listening to an herbalism podcast, you’ve probably heard of turmeric. You probably know that it’s anti-inflammatory. You may already be familiar with some chemistry in turmeric. The curcumin, or the broader term is curcuminoids. Oid means kind of like, right? So, to say curcuminoids means that there’s curcumin as strictly defined. And then there’s a bunch of other chemicals that are almost the same but a little bit different. Like a little bend over here, a little extra bit tacked on over there. And so they’re curcumin-ish. They’re curcuminoid. So, that particular chemistry has been very well identified and very heavily studied. And from one perspective, this is the active ingredient in turmeric, right? And so, our take on that whole concept of the active ingredient is that the active ingredient in turmeric is turmeric. The active ingredient in elderberry is the whole berry, right? We don’t like to be reductionist when we look at our plants. We find that there can be drawbacks to that. Now, turmeric products, you’ll find some that are the whole spectrum extract. You’ll find some that are standardized, and that means that they’ve decided they want to hit X percent curcumin. So, they’re going to do some extract. They might do multiple extracts and combine them. Like get extra curcumin from over here, combine it with this raw or this native extract. That’s a term from the industry, right? It means that it hasn’t been deeply processed, or selectively enhanced, or whatever. But then you add that isolated curcumin on top of it. And you say all right, I’ve got this capsule for you. I guarantee you’re going to get 10% curcumin, even if that’s not what naturally occurs in the plant. So, standardization often involves some degree of concentration, which is to say presenting you with something that has a higher proportion of that target chemistry than you would get in the whole plant itself.

Ryn (00:52:07):
And then sometimes we see isolates, right? Isolates means you’ve taken just that one chemical. So, if it’s not a turmeric product, it’s a curcumin product. That I would consider a plant extract isolate, right? You have isolated that one compound. You’re only taking that. So, I’m just describing all of this because turmeric, more so than many other plants that are popular, that are sold in commercial products, this one does turn up in whole plant extracts, and in isolates, and in everything in between, the varieties of standardization or concentration. And furthermore, the sales, the way they’re categorizing this, the sales for turmeric include those isolates. You could make a contrast there with the herb senna, right? Senna is that stimulant laxative plant. With senna, if it’s a whole plant extract, that’s probably going to be sold as a supplement and included in these discussions. But if they just isolate the sennosides – this is chemistry in senna that has that stimulant effect on your bowels – when those are isolated and put into an over-the-counter medication or when they’re put into a product, it’s going to be classed or categorized as an over-the-counter medication instead. Okay. So anyway, curcumin, curcuminoid, turmeric, some combination of all of these things. These are all grouped here together, right? And they’re all sold for similar purposes, right, primarily for joint pain, for inflammation, for joint health. Many now for, again, that sort of general improves health, or general health, or whatever. Sometimes that’s all the marketing they choose to do, or all of the label claims they choose to make.

Ryn (00:54:03):
There are different ways to categorize how a product is being marketed. Usually what’s used is called health focus, right? And if there’s a product, and it lists three or four things that can help you with, it would be whichever one is biggest, or most repeated, or something like that. So, turmeric because it’s popular, because it has that broad reputation as an anti-inflammatory, there are turmeric products that are being sold for like 20 different health focuses. But most of them are really minimal. Pain, inflammation, joint health, those are the biggest ones, and they have been for a decade or two. What I’m noticing though, and I’m seeing this among functional medicine people, and naturopath practitioners, and stuff like that, is that there’s a movement being made toward discussing turmeric as a remedy beyond joints, and inflammation, and gut health. And looking into cardiovascular health as kind of the next frontier. And then beyond that there are some stirrings around turmeric as a remedy for cognitive health and for brain health. Now, all of these share a common root, right? When we look at the propensity for people to have inflammatory diseases or to have health conditions that are exacerbated by inflammation. And then we look at a substance like turmeric that can have powerful anti-inflammatory effect throughout the body. Then we should expect that it can act on many different places in your system, right? And therefore that it can help with cardiovascular inflammation, inflammation that’s irritating your brain or interfering with healthy nervous system function, digestive inflammation, inflammation in your joints, all the way through, right? But it is again interesting to me to see where do people try to make space for a new market for turmeric sales, right? That turmeric over there is for your belly. This one here is for your brain. Haha, right? For us we see the herb. We see its capacity to mitigate inflammation, and we see the expressions of inflammation in all these different places in the system. And so it does kind of all hang together.

Ryn (00:56:32):
On the other hand, as an herbalist, I don’t think inflammation equals turmeric, right? I think okay, do I want a carminative? Do I want a plant that has pungency to it and is going to be digestive stimulant? And also has some obvious anti-inflammatory activity that you can observe when you take somebody with really irritated guts, and they work with turmeric, and it’s a good match for their system. Because it is a hot herb, because it is a drying herb, because it has some tonifying qualities to it. So, if we have somebody most ideally who’s damp, and lax, and cold, and we have them work more with turmeric, they’re going to get the most benefit from it. Somebody who’s hot, and dry, and tense already, and they just start shoveling turmeric into themselves. That may not actually be the best goal or the best match for them. The dryness exacerbation is the most likely first thing to see. Sometimes people experience heat from turmeric. It’s very similar to ginger. It’s almost as warm as ginger. Not quite. But anyway, it’s a food. It can be an herbal remedy in terms of tea, or tincture, or things like that. And its activities are going to start in the digestive system. If you take turmeric by itself, it’s primarily a digestive remedy. And part of that is because curcumin and the curcuminoids, like the whole crew, they’re not super easily absorbed through the intestinal barrier to get into the liver, to get into the bloodstream, to get into general circulation and to reach your joints, or your brain, or your heart, right? When you take turmeric by itself, it’s primarily a gastrointestinal remedy, anti-inflammatory, soothing, wound healing. It has a bunch of really nice benefits. That carminative effect of moving things along, releasing tensions in the guts, right?

Piperine & Taking Turmeric

Ryn (00:58:36):
And so when somebody is dealing with Crohn’s disease or IBS, or an unnamed but pervasive digestive discomfort, then I would actually encourage them to take turmeric without black pepper. Because that’s the other way that you’re going to see… That’s one of the very common ways you’re going to see turmeric sold, is in combination with an extract of black pepper or specifically with this compound called piperine. The reason that people do that is because piperine alters some things at the intestinal lining, which allow the curcumin to pass through it more readily and to get up – like I say – into the liver, into systemic circulation, and to reach these distant parts of your body distant from the gut, okay? So, if somebody wants to take turmeric because of rheumatoid arthritis with swelling around the joints. Or if they are feeling like they’ve they’re worried about brain inflammation, and they want to try turmeric for that. Then that’s the situation where it would make more sense to combine turmeric together with black pepper, as is often traditionally done. Even in a chai formula, a bit of black pepper can go into there. Or if you’re going to buy capsules or whatever. If those are the types of goal you have, go ahead and get one that includes the turmeric and the black pepper extract. I personally do think it’s best to get full-spectrum extracts of each rather than isolated curcumin plus isolated piperine. And I say that as a preference, but also I do have some safety concerns there. In recent years there have been some reports through things like the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program and some other programs like that which have shown a heightened risk of adverse effects from people taking high doses, like very, very high doses of isolated curcumin with isolated piperine. Which you don’t really observe when it’s whole turmeric and whole black pepper being mixed together. And so I think it’s actually better to go with more traditional methods in this case, and that it’s safer. Just to be clear, even in those cases where there have been troubles found, it’s not like it’s rampant, and every single person who takes it gets liver damage. It would be people who already had some existing liver trouble or had other impositions on their metabolism there. But still, that’s enough people that I am going to be thoughtful about it.

Ryn (01:01:09):
All right. Turmeric has been investigated for a number of different inflammatory problems. And there is just very consistent evidence that it exerts these effects. That it’s anti-inflammatory. As a result of that it can relieve pain, or swelling, or other forms of discomfort. And so, nobody here is saying that it’s not effective. Just that the ways you take it might be improved or might be best serving you. And again, in our opinion, that’s when you get it closer to the most traditional ways of working with it. In food as a component in curry or other spice blends. And also in decoctions, whether you make it in coconut milk. Or if you tolerate dairy, if you prepare it that way, and you prepare your golden milk, right? That’s another classic way to work with it. There is some benefit to having the turmeric together with a fatty substance like that in terms of absorption. So, yeah, it’s great stuff. We like turmeric a lot. And one thing that is sometimes neglected when it comes to turmeric is topical applications. So, I’ve got two show links regarding turmeric for you in the notes today. One is episode 184, where we talked about hawthorn and turmeric. That was in our A-to-Z series there, A to Z by Latin name: Crataegus and Curcuma. And then also way back episode 149, we did one on topical herbs for acne. And turmeric was one of our favorites, along with another plant you might not think of as a topical, which is echinacea. But the two of those are really, really good for certain forms of acne. With turmeric it’s especially the ones that are more pustulant, more swollen. There’s, yeah, goo if you squeeze. Okay, yeah. Turmeric on those is quite nice. It will put a little gold tint on the skin, so be aware about that. But it is a nice direct way to exert that anti-inflammatory action and some antimicrobial effect as well, some bacteriostatic effect on the surface. All right. So you can hear a bit more about turmeric in those episodes. Okay.

The Mainstream Channel: #4 Ashwagandha

Ryn (01:03:26):
And then one more herb for now, and we’ll come back to this sequence later on, ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is number four, Withania somnifera. And so I probably don’t have to tell you, right, ashwagandha has gotten quite popular. A lot more people are responding – when I ask them if they’ve heard of it – in the positive today than did 10 years ago, or certainly 20 years ago. Ashwagandha has kind of made its mark, right? And again, this is the mainstream list, right? So, Ashwagandha’s coming in ahead of cranberry supplements, and ginger, and ginkgo, and echinacea, and a bunch of other things that have been more popular for more time. But ashwagandha came around several years back. It kind of leapt up the charts in 2018 and 2019. And then it’s continued to improve its standing every year since then. So, it’s up to number four. We’ll see what happens next year, right, if we take the bronze or something. But that’s what’s been going on with ashwagandha. And it’s marketed almost always as an adaptogen. And it might use that word explicitly. A lot of products use that word adaptogen now because it’s caught on enough that people are familiar enough that it might draw the eye and make the purchase. Some products that we’d categorize as adaptogens are just marketed under the context of stress or… Yeah, usually it’s like stress relief, something like that. Some ashwagandha products emphasize its benefits for sleep. And of course that is baked right into the name. The Latin name of the plant, Withania somnifera, -fera is to bring. And somni- is from somnus, like sleep. So, right there it’s about bringing around good sleep. And so yeah, there are some products that emphasize that.

Ryn (01:05:29):
Some people experience ashwagandha as sedative. I think that’s less common, at least in my experience, talking to students and clients. Certainly in my own direct experience I find it to have a mild stimulating quality to it. But if you time it right, if you take it during the daytime, then it can help you to be awake, and energetic, and get some stuff done, and then to rest easier at night. And so we find this to be particularly helpful when we’re trying to support cycle and circadian rhythm entrainment. Like when your sleep cycle is really disjunct. It could be completely irregular. It could be that it’s just offset from the sun’s circadian rhythm by a few too many hours, and it’s causing negative problems for you. So, when somebody’s trying to change their cycles of sleep, and wakefulness, and rest, and recovery, trying to make some improvements in that. Or when there have been things that have disrupted cycle. And I keep using that word cycle, but I mean it in a broad sense. The first cycle we think about for ashwagandha is day and night, right? Active and awake and alert during the day, expressing energy. And then resting and recovering and sleeping and dreaming at night, right? Recovering well. But ashwagandha, let’s say because it supports that cycle, it can support larger cycles. Like a menstrual cycle, for instance, like something running on the course of a month. And this is an adaptogen that comes to mind when there are menstrual cycle irregularities in particular, right? And I don’t just mean… I do mean irregular. Like not it’s always heavy. We would address that maybe with some astringent herbs, maybe some yarrow, some shepherd’s purse, some lady’s mantle, something like that when it’s always just hot and heavy all the time, right? But when it’s irregular. Like this month it was short, and then it was long, and then it was heavy bleeding, and then it was nothing. That’s more like all right, let’s try some ashwagandha over the next several months, and see if we get some more normalized circulation of your cycle. Yeah.

Ryn (01:07:46):
Ashwagandha can also be helpful when you need to adapt to an altered schedule. When your schedule needs to shift and change around, it can be very helpful there. And then around, like I said, in building new habits and regimens around sleep, and wake, and activity, and rest. Yeah. And then one thing to note from the broader perspective on ashwagandha because I’ve kind of given just a short moment to say it’s marketed for stress. It’s marketed for sleep. A lot of people are stressed. A lot of people can’t sleep well. So, the popularity I think is explained very easily there. The way that any ashwagandha product can refer to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda is also part of what has driven its popularity as that system, as that tradition has become better known in America in part through the work of yoga teachers, in part through the work of marketers, yeah. But that’s part of the attraction. On that note I always like to point out, because it was news to me the first time I heard it. And it was news after working with this herb for six or eight years. That it’s not only an Indian or an Ayurvedic plant. Ashwagandha grows all the way west from there up into northern and eastern Africa. And there are a number of different ways that people have worked with it traditionally, including working not only with the root, but also with the leaves. And many of the most traditional applications that I’ve, I’ve come across for those have been topical wound care and stabilization and skin issues and things like that.

Out of the Box Clarity & Balance

Ryn (01:09:28):
So, ashwagandha is an herb that has a degree of popularity right now where a lot of people feel like they know it very well. But I think for that very reason, it’s a good example of this general idea I’ve been raising today that plants get boxed in pretty tight. And if you were to just reduce what ashwagandha can do down to relieves stress, I think that on the one hand you are missing out on some of the helpful things. Like somebody might hear that but not think at all about sleep. Because they’re like well, I’m stressed in the daytime. Maybe if they feel stressed and can’t sleep, they might make a connection. But if you say this can specifically help you to sleep better through the night because it helps you to be energetic and active in the day. That gives a lot more clarity. And it can help the person to know whether that’s actually going to be what’s most helpful for them, or if they just need a good strong relaxant like some kava, right? And that can help people to make better choices and get better results. So, you know, we see that as our job. For more on ashwagandha check out episode 226. That’s where we highlighted that herb in particular, Withania. And then also look at episode 155. That’s where we talked about equinox thoughts on balance and on herbs that are given this name amphoteric. Which is sometimes just reduced to balancing, but we have a lot to say about that topic. And that was one of my favorite episodes actually. I really hope you’ll listen to it if you haven’t already. Because balance is a concept that is very important. It has a lot of nuance to it. And oftentimes that gets missed in a way that I think can get people stuck. Like literally thinking of balance as a frozen point of no movement is a good way to get yourself mentally and emotionally stuck and attached to something that’s not going to behave that way for you. When the reality of balance is that it’s something that requires constant adjustments and response to your context. Ooh, you can see there’s a lot to dig into with that on conceptual and philosophical levels.

Ryn (01:11:45):
But we’re going to leave some more of that for other times, and I think I’m going to wrap it up here today. Like I said, I’m going to continue on with this series. We’ll probably weave it in with some other types of episodes as we go through the next several months here. But I hope you find this interesting and helpful regardless of where you’re at in terms of your training. If you’re new to herbalism, and this is the first you’re hearing about these plants, great. I’m glad I got to you first. If you’ve been around a while, and you know these plants in other ways too, then I’d be really happy for you to share those with us. You can find our contact info and reach out right through the show notes there. So, yeah. So, that’s it for today. I want to just mention that we do have long profiles on several of these plants in our Materia Medica course. We don’t talk about Plantago ovata so much, but Plantago major and Plantago, lanceolata, those plantains. Elder, turmeric, ashwagandha, we have complete profiles for each of those in our Materia Medica course. And if you do want to dive into the 90-plus plants that we find to be most important and helpful in our practice, then that’s the place to do it. And the other reason to take something, to take a Materia Medical course like ours is to learn how to understand plants. What are the aspects of it that we need to know about? Flavor, a little bit about chemistry can be helpful. The herbal actions that have been attached to that plant throughout history and through practice. The kinds of formulations that it makes sense in. The kind of friends that it plays nicely with. So, that’s what we present in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. And it’s again, very, very critical as an herbalist to know your plants as well as you can. The best way to do that is to study them in their fullness, in their complete complexity. And try to get further and further away from you take this herb for this problem, right? That’s a big piece of the work as we try to develop our skills. All right. So, that’s it for today. I hope that you enjoyed it. And I hope that you take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and drink some tea. We’ll see you soon.