Podcast 275: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 12): CBD, Fennel, Oats

Back to it! Today’s best-seller herbal supplements are CBD, fennel, and oats. To the extent there’s overlap between these, it’s some capacity to touch on the nervous system – or at least, in the case of fennel, digestive symptoms which can be due to stress and anxiety.

CBD is a widely-known, and yet poorly-understood, substance. It is not identical to a full-spectrum cannabis extract, neither in terms of its range of effects nor its safety profile with respect to adverse effects or addiction. Its regulatory status in the US also complicates matters: nationally legal only when certain criteria are met, and of varying legality state to state. It is neither a cure-all nor a placebo, and variance between products makes direct comparisons tricky.

Fennel is one of the herbs on this list with the greatest similarity between folk and traditional medicine applications and its modern market presentation. As a carminative, sweet demulcent, and mild galactagogue, it is helpful for a variety of discomforts. Its pleasant and familiar flavor is a strong point in its favor, and it plays very nicely in formula with other herbs.

At our school, we don’t devote much attention to oats, whether milky oats or oat straw. We have reservations about its purported actions – particularly oat straw – and about its potential to trigger those who are gluten-sensitive. This does set us apart from basically every other herb school and herbalist out there, we admit it! Still, its popularity both with the general public and among herbal practitioners is undeniable, so it’s worth understanding the nature of these discussions.

32. Cannabidiol (CBD) – Cannabis sativa

• The Wholistic Healing Guide to Cannabis, Tammi Sweet – This book is notable for its explanation of the endocannabinoid system, as well as its advocacy for full-spectrum plant extracts as superior to cannabinoid isolates.
• Cannabis at Herbal Reality

33. Fennel – Foeniculum vulgare

• Fennel: Herb of the Week
• HHP 189: Herbs A-Z: Filipendula & Foeniculum

34. Oats / Oatstraw – Avena sativa

• Avena-A Monograph on Oats as Medicine, 7Song
• Oats at Herbal Reality

Nerve pain? Agitation impacting digestion? Burnout? CBD, fennel, and oats may be helpful with these problems, but you’ll get better results by learning the underlying physiology of your nervous system and how herbs can influence it. Our Neurological & Emotional Health course is a user’s guide to your nerves, your emotions, and the herbs who can lift you, hold you, brace you, and sustain you. We teach holistic herbal strategies for addressing both neurological & psychological health issues. It includes a lengthy discussion of herbal pain management strategies, too!

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

Previous episode in this series:

• 1: Psyllium, Elderberry, Turmeric, Ashwagandha
• 2: Apple Cider Vinegar, Cranberry
• 3: Wheatgrass, Beet Root, Ginger
• 4: Green Tea, Fenugreek, Ivy Leaf
• 5: Ginkgo, Guarana, Maca
• 6: Saw Palmetto, Cinnamon, Echinacea
• 7: Tribulus, Pycnogenol, Garlic
• 8: Milk Thistle, Black Cohosh
• 9: Aloe, Flax (plus new market data!)
• 10: Valerian, Pumpkin, Goji, Red Yeast Rice
• 11: Yohimbe & Horny Goat Weed

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Ryn (00:15):
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. All right. So, we’re back to it today, continuing the series on the herbalists’ views on the top-selling herbs. This is a tour through the top 40 bestselling herbs according to a report that comes out every year. And that’s put together by the folks over at HerbalGram. I’ve got a link to it in the show notes, of course. And so this series has been running for a little while. If you haven’t heard the previous episodes in it, then you can find those right here in the feed and run through all of these plants. Well, and some are fungi, and some are seaweeds, and other things too. But the reason that I’m doing this series – just for a quick refresher – is that these are popular things. They’re things that a lot of people are taking, and so it’s important for us as practitioners to know about them. And I think it’s helpful for people who are interested in herbalism to get the perspective of somebody who’s a practitioner, somebody who’s been working and studying in this field for in my case 15 years. To get a sense of how we think about these things, both in the context of their modern market presentations and also in comparison to what we understand about traditional work with these plants and what contemporary herbalists do with them, because those things aren’t always the same. All right.

#32 CBD: Product Legality & the Endocannabinoids

Ryn (01:42):
So, today’s episode is going to focus on three. We’re going to look at CBD, which is of course, an extract from the cannabis plant. We’re going to look at fennel, one of my personal favorites. And we’re going to look at oats. Sometimes when I do this sequence I try to find some overlap between the herbs. And of course, the reason that they’re next to each other is kind of a random or a coincidental occurrence. So, it’s not always there. In this case, the best I could do would be to say that there’s some capacity of each of these herbs to touch on the nervous system. Whether very directly like oats can do in certain forms,. we’ll come back to that. Or via another subsystem, like the way that the cannabinoids can influence our endocannabinoid system. And then that has influences on our nerves and a lot of other things in the body. Or in the case of fennel, it’s a little more indirect. It’s because fennel is going to operate as a nice digestive relaxant and a gentle warming herb for digestive purposes. But that can be helpful in the course of stress, or anxiety, or other kinds of mental upset. Because if you’re anything like me, when you have those feelings, you also have some gut discomfort as well. So, that might be a bit of a unifying thread as we go through our topic today.

Ryn (02:58):
But before I get too much further, I just want to remind you that I and we here are not doctors. We are herbalists, and we are holistic health educators. So, 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. I want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, your experiences, and your goals. And so, please keep in mind we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic right way that you should adhere to or a way for you to think. Everyone’s body is different, so the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But they should give you some more information to think about and some ideas to research and to experiment with further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s still your choice to make. All right.

Ryn (04:09):
So let’s start talking, and let’s begin with number 32 on the top 40 list for the data that we’re reviewing here. This is cannabidiol or CBD. That is an extract from Cannabis sativa. And it’s probably something that you’ve heard of at this point because it’s gotten pretty popular over the past decade or so. And it’s had a pretty extensive distribution in the market, at least here in the United States and to some extent in other countries as well. But there have been some ups and downs in its market presence. And in the data we’re looking at, this was gathered in the year 2023 or covering that span of time. There were some updates in the subsequent year. But at least in that period of time what they saw was that there was a decline in sales by about 26%, which is pretty significant, right? Now, there are some elements of the change in CBD product sales and popularity that have to do with regulatory and legal changes. So, in the United States currently, right now, in the year 2026, the current situation is that any product that is derived from hemp or cannabis or marijuana, using all of those different words to refer to the same species, Cannabis sativa. Any product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per the whole container of that product that you’re going to buy, that’s going to be significantly restricted in terms of where it can be sold. And this is starting at the federal level, so things that would apply across all of the different states. And setting aside for just this moment any particular state laws, or rulings, or enforcement habits that have come down that might make the situation on the ground a little bit different for the people who live there and want to sell their products there.

Ryn (06:19):
So, if your product has less than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container that you’re going to put it in and sell, that can be sold as a hemp product or as a hemp extract. If it has more than that, then it’s going to have to be categorized as a cannabis supplement of one kind or another or a cannabis recreational product of one kind or another. And so it’s going to depend there on which state are you in and what kind of regulations, what kind of laws have they set up to govern the sale and the availability of such things. All of that said, there is certainly a fair degree of internet commerce that is allowing people to order things that are technically considered illegal in their state. Newsflash, this isn’t new. This happens with a lot of things because there’s a lot of internet out there. Some of it’s in the dark web. And some of it’s more in a gray zone, or it’s just not yet been subject to close scrutiny or a lot of enforcement. So, you know, there’s the law as written, there’s the regulations that emerge out of the law, and then there’s the enforcement of those things. And those can all be very different. And so people who are trying to work in this industry or trying to offer products of this nature, it’s difficult to navigate, and at some point you kind of have to make a decision and run with it.

Ryn (07:44):
Okay, so let’s leave THC aside for the moment and focus in on the CBD itself, right? So it is again, it is one of the constituents, one of the more famous constituents of the cannabis plant. It’s in the same group as THC. These are broadly called cannabinoids. And these have significant actions in our bodies, both THC, and CBD, and CBG, and CBN, and all the other cannabinoids that have been identified so far. They all seem to have some capacity to influence our physiology, and in some cases very strongly or very palpably. And the main reason for that is because in our metabolism, in what we generate and what we produce inside of our own body, we have really similar molecules at play already. Again, you may know this already, those are referred to as endocannabinoids. And just as an aside here, this is one of those circumstances where we name a thing that exists inside of our physiology based on other things that we’ve discovered prior to identifying that or characterizing that within our own systems, right? So, we had endocannabinoids long before we had named the cannabis plant, right? Or long before we had identified this group of chemicals that exists inside that plant and then found a similar group of chemicals that exist inside our body later on. And said okay, well, there’s cannabinoids from the cannabis plant, and so there’s endocannabinoids from over here. They could have been called something else, and it would’ve been just as fine. My kind of favorite example of that sort of thing though, is the piece of your neurological physiology called the benzodiazepine receptor. Because in that case, that’s very much like well, we invented a category of pharmaceutical drug called benzodiazepines. And then we started playing with them, tried to figure out how they worked, and then identified a receptor inside our bodies. And said oh, that’s the receptor for that kind of drug. But of course it was there before the drug existed. It was there for other purposes. And there are things, again, in your own physiology that could bind to that same receptor site and activate it in various ways.

CBD Impacts on Body Systems & Energetics

Ryn (10:00):
So, you know, terminology is weird. The progress of science is always a little strange in terms of how things get named and how we categorize them. But to return to the endocannabinoids, it’s worth saying here too that this is a relatively recent discovery. We’re talking 30ish years at most that this has been known, that this has been investigated. And as far as science goes, as far as physiology goes, that’s new. That’s new stuff, and the nuances of it are still very much under investigation and under active study. All right. But we can say about CBD in particular that because of the way that it interfaces with our endocannabinoid system. The way it binds to cannabinoid receptors, because there’s more than one, and they manifest differently on different cells and tissue types inside of our body. That first off, it does have significant actions, and that it has different types of actions from what THC does. Again, most of this is probably not news to you that CBD is not going to get somebody high. That it doesn’t have psychoactive, or psychedelic, or whatever term we choose to use. Inebriating some people say. It doesn’t have that type of action the way that THC does. That might be appealing to somebody who has heard about the capacity of the cannabis plant to benefit their health, or to reduce inflammation, or to relieve pain, or to do other things, but they don’t want to quote, be intoxicated. Okay. But what we can say about CBD from experience, and from study, and so on is that it can make a significant impact on inflammation. And by the way, because of that, it can make an impact on things like pain when they’re caused by inflammation or when inflammation is one of the causes for what’s going on.

Ryn (11:56):
CBD also has significant impacts on immune function. And there again, we could start with the inflammatory process. Because both endogenous cannabinoids and exogenous cannabinoids, the ones that come from plants, they’re all significantly involved with the regulation – or the modulation is probably a better word – of inflammatory processes in your body. But as far as CBD goes, its effects in terms of immunity don’t seem to be limited only to those aspects of immunity that are involved in or are expressed by the inflammatory response. It does reach a little bit broader than that. There’s also numerous effects of this on the nervous system, generally in that direction of soothing, calming, quieting, and relaxing, right? It would be on that side of our spectrum. If we were to assign herbal energetics to the single molecule, we would say okay, this is broadly speaking, cooling. I’m going to leave moist and dry kind of agnostic for this one, but we would say it would be cooling, and it would be relaxant most notably. Effects of CBD on the nervous system, they generally are going to be most notable when someone is coping with a mental state like anxiety or trauma responses. But also with physical aspects like seizures most famously or neuropathic pain, right? Both of those we can think of as expressions of agitation, overexcitation of the nervous system. Too intense a signal or too much disorganized activity in the case of a seizure. If we can quiet that down, if we can get it more organized, more coordinated, then we can get a significant benefit there. And CBD itself and then also high CBD strains of cannabis that people work with have become fairly well-known and effectively delivered for seizure disorders and then some other related problems that have to do with that overactivation of the nervous system.

CBD Isolates & the Importance of Synergy & Aromatics

Ryn (14:12):
All right. About products in the marketplace that you’re going to encounter. Many, many products in the marketplace are going to include isolated CBD rather than a broad-spectrum extract. And this is often for legal reasons because THC containing products are much more highly regulated and scrutinized, right? Like I was saying before, if it’s detected that you’re above that 0.4 milligrams per container, then now you’re in a different category as far as the regulation is concerned. Now, from the herbalist perspective this does mean that when we consume a CBD-only product, we do lose out on some synergy, right? One of our main concepts and the things that gets us excited as an herbalist is learning and understanding the synergy between different compounds within a plant. The way that together three, or 12, or a hundred different chemicals that a plant produces can do something different than any one of them can do alone. So, synergy in terms of cannabis begins with the other cannabinoids, right? And it’s not at all unusual for the benefits of CBD or the things that someone is gravitating towards a CBD product to try to accomplish, that those could be significantly enhanced when it’s taken together with even a tiny amount of THC. Like if it was a 20:1 ratio of CBD to THC in that particular plant or product, that often has a notably better effect for these same kinds of effects on anxiety relief and other elements like that. But that’s not where this stops.

Ryn (15:59):
The synergy inside the plant extends out to the aromatic elements like terpenoids, which are also produced by the herb. And one of the key things to understand about cannabis is that in part because of the innate nature and capacity of the plant itself, and then in large part because of the way people have interacted with it over long time spans, it’s a plant that is quite a chameleon in terms of its aromatic profile. It’s able to produce pinene, which you would associate with a pine tree and has like an uplifting and activating sort of an element to it. But another variety might produce linalool, which is mostly associated with lavender and has that more floral scent and more of a relaxing and calming aspect to it as well. And so in a lot of cases, if we’re looking at different strains of the whole cannabis plant at a dispensary or something like this, the big drivers about differentiation between them and the way they affect you and the way they make you feel is going to include the ratio of THC to CBD, the concentrations of each of them, and then also the profile of aromatic elements like terpenoids and other compounds that are present in that plant. Because those are not inert. Those are not just a little bit extra. They’re big drivers of the way these plants impact our bodies, just the same way that they are in lavender, or pine, or rosemary, or tulsi, or any other aromatic plant that we work with.

Ryn (17:31):
Okay. And so I would have to say that I generally am going to prefer or expect to be a little more effective a product that does include some of that synergy from the original plant. Even if what we’ve done here is we’ve isolated the cannabinoids and eliminated the THC, and we just have CBD. But we include some of the terpenoids, whether they’re actually from cannabis itself, or whether they were brought in from some other herbs. But if your goal is to aid sleep with a CBD product, that’s going to be more effective if you have humulene like it comes out of hops, or you have linalool like comes out of lavender, or other elements, other aromatics that are in that direction of sedation, and calming, and relaxation. So, that’s a thing to keep an eye out for.

Individual Variability in Response to CBD

Ryn (18:21):
I also have to say that in our practice and in our discussions with students over the years, we’ve seen very mixed results for people who choose to work with a CBD product. Some people have come to us and said this is the only thing that touches my chronic pain and enables me to sleep, one or the other or both. Other people have said you know, I’ve tried a dozen different things. I’ve tried a bunch of different doses. And I really don’t feel anything at all. I don’t know what this is doing. It doesn’t seem worth the time, or the money, or the energy, right? So, it’s worth saying there might be a lot of different reasons for that, and they could all be happening simultaneously, right? One of them is that there can be very large differences in the endocannabinoid system of each person. That would be talking about your expression of various endocannabinoid compounds like anandamide. And it could also be differences in your expression of the receptors for those compounds. So, how much you make, and how much you receive that signal once it’s gotten to the right cell, that can vary a lot between people. There are some much debated theories in medicine about whether such a thing as endocannabinoid deficiency exists. And if so, what it means, or what causes it, or what to do about it, things like that. But at the very least we can say there have been investigations into the production, the endogenous production of these things and the generation of receptors to receive them. Those would naturally have an influence on the way you receive a CBD product, or for that matter a THC product, for that matter the way some person like that is going to relate or respond to taking cannabis through smoke or whatever other method as well. So, that’s one element in the variation in response that people are going to get.

Ryn (20:19):
Another major element here is going to be variations in the quality, the purity, and overall the composition of the products that people buy and try. So, both CBD-only product and other more broad-spectrum or full-spectrum cannabis products have been investigated. You get a bunch of them from a dispensary or from a bunch of dispensaries. You bring them to a lab. You analyze them and say all right, does this have in it what it says it has in it on the label, right? And in all these examples, there have been pretty repeated findings that show enormous variation in the levels of those constituents. It’s not unusual for a study like that to come out and say yeah, well, there were two products here. And they were labeled to contain the same number of milligrams of CBD per serving, or per unit, or whatever, right? They both said you’re going to take this many gummies or this many squares of chocolate. And it’s going to provide you five or 10 milligrams of CBD, or whatever the number is. And that there’s big variations between the two products that you’re looking at in terms of what they actually deliver to you. Maybe one of them is right on the target. One of them is half as much. One of them is one and a half times as much or even more than that. It’s even sometimes been found that two batches of a given product from the same supplier, the same maker in the same packaging and whatever, they might also have significant variation in terms of what they deliver. And from study to study or investigation to investigation the low and high numbers, the this much less than it claims to have, or this many times more than it claims to have, those can vary quite a lot. But just based on studies like this I’ve seen, it’s not actually unusual to see these numbers being like well, it contained one fifth at the low end of what it claimed to have. Or in some extreme cases like five times as much as it claimed to have.

Ryn (22:25):
So, those are outliers, right, but it can happen. And so that means that it’s difficult to feel a lot of confidence if you go to a shop, or a dispensary, or an online supplier, and you say this product is going to give me x milligrams of CBD every time I take a dose. What we can do about this practically is say that if you find a product that seems to help you, seems to work for you in the way that you’re hoping, just recognize there’s no particular guarantee that another product which looks identical or makes an identical claim is actually going to work the same way. Usually you can be a little more reliable from batch-to-batch from the same provider. But again, brand-to-brand comparisons, those are more likely to have variants for you. And so you should be at the very least willing to do some initial experimentation or to not be too horribly disappointed if it’s not feeling exactly the same way as the one that you’ve been used to so far.

CBD-Only Products & Dependency

Ryn (23:32):
All right. One last note on this. At present, given our current state of understanding of these things, it doesn’t seem that CBD-only cannabis products are capable or are likely to produce dependency and yes, even addiction, the way that THC can do or any cannabis product that contains THC. THC does that. And it does that because of the types of receptor sites that it binds to and the response that the cells which make those receptors have when there is repeated introduction of THC into your body from the outside world. The basic pathway here is that the more you’re exposed to it from your plant sources, the more your body says huh, there’s a lot of this coming through. I can actually dial down the number of receptors I make on each given cell. Because there’s a lot coming through all the time, and I don’t have to make so much of my own. I can reduce the amount of receptors here. And that’s the pathway to ever increasing doses. Because you’re trying to get the same effect. Your number of receptors is depleted, and so the response by the body is smaller and smaller. You’re going to want to take more and more in order to get that same feeling. So, once upon a time people used to say that you can’t get addicted to cannabis. That it’s only a psychological addiction rather than a physiological one. And again, remember, understanding the endocannabinoid system is fairly new. And when people were in the habit of saying that, when that kind of became a standard thing to claim about this, they didn’t understand that there was this system. That there were these endogenous molecules. That there were these custom-made receptors for this type of thing in our system. And now we know better.

Ryn (25:20):
But again, at least at present, CBD doesn’t seem to have that particular risk. Okay. I’ve got a couple links in the show notes for you. One is to a little monograph about cannabis. Another one is to a book all about this plant and more importantly about the endocannabinoid system. The book I find is quite notable for the way it explains the system and makes it clear about how that works and how it interfaces with immunity, and inflammation, and the nervous system, and other elements like that. And then the other big thing I like about that book is that it has a lot of clarity about why full-spectrum products are going to be better than isolated cannabinoid items. So, that’s called the Holistic Healing Guide to Cannabis. It’s by a friend of ours, actually, Tammi Sweet, an excellent herbalist and teacher of physiology. So, I encourage you to check that out if you want to go further. All right. I debated how deeply to get into discussions about cannabinoids, and CB1 versus CB2 binding, and all that other kind of stuff here. So, I left it where you just heard it, right? Certainly there’s a lot more information, and you could go a lot deeper into that topic. And if you’re interested in it, then I encourage that. There’s a lot to learn.

Fennel: A Carminative & Sweet Demulcent

Ryn (26:36):
But for now, let’s go ahead and move on to the next herb on our list. Number 33 is fennel, Foeniculum vulgare. Fennel is an interesting herb for this series. Because I think as you’ve noticed so far, there’s a lot of variation in the way that herbalist today understand and work with their plants based on their direct experience, based on tradition, based on old books, and even ancient books, and things like that. There’s a lot of variance between that and the market presentation, right? We look at something like garlic, and we’re thinking about food. And we’re thinking about topical preparations for skin infections. And we’re thinking about all different ways to prepare it, and take it, and combine it with other things. And then you go to the store, and you see garlic as a supplement, and it’s capsules. And it’s all about your quote, cardiovascular health. And like secretly they want you to know it’s about your cholesterol levels, right, or maybe your blood pressure. So, that happens a lot. That the market presentation is very restricted and very minimal compared to the historical practice of the plant. In the case of fennel, though, fennel is one of the herbs whose modern market presentation is almost entirely in line with its historical and traditional herbal aspects.

Ryn (27:58):
And the watch word for all of this is just going to be digestive support, right? So, let’s break that down and get a little more detailed about it though using some herbal language, using the language of actions. And so we can start with the term carminative. Fennel is, I’d consider, a mild to moderate carminative. And that means that it’s an herb that can release tension in your digestive system. And it can gently warm it up to help eliminate feelings of sluggishness and the slowed movement that makes you feel heavy, and stuck, and backed up, right? In the case of fennel, the relaxant quality is much more significant than the warming effect. And it’s most suited because of that to conditions that are primarily to do with tension and cramping in your guts and in your belly. If there’s more of a cold pattern, like things are just slow. They’re not moving at the pace they should. The transit time is really extended. Then you might want a little more heat. And it might make sense to pair your fennel with a more heating carminative herb. And ginger would be the simplest and possibly the best example of an herb to do that with. You could also do something like making a tincture blend. And it’s 90% or even 95% fennel and then five or 10% cayenne. That’s going to be plenty of heat to really warm up the combo and give you the capacity to stimulate, and activate, and get things moving again. So, carminative aspect is the main thing with fennel. And whenever there’s that cramping, that bloating, that gas, that discomfort in there, then fennel is a really nice choice.

Ryn (29:52):
It’s also a nice choice because it tastes sweet. And it’s one of the herbs that we put in this category of sweet demulcent. That’s giving an extra adjective to the word demulcent, right? Which means an herb that is moistening and improves hydration status inside your body and your utilization and movement of fluids. When we talk about demulcents, we can bring them into different groups. We can say we’ve got slimy demulcents. There’s even a few that are bitter demulcents. And then we have our sweet demulcents. So, this is going to include plants like licorice and fenugreek. And these aren’t mucilaginous like our slimy demulcents, like marshmallow, like seaweeds, right? Where you put them into water and they get at least a little bit velvety or viscous if not all the way outright slimy, right? So, the sweet demulcents don’t do that particular effect. When you put them in the water, you let them soak in, you let them infuse, you can feel maybe even on your fingertips but certainly in your mouth and in your throat, you can feel a smoothing kind of effect. They are still moistening to those tissues. It’s more like a coating, like a soothing influence on the throat, the mouth as well, and then also down through your stomach and even further on through there, which can be a very pleasant feeling. It can be a great relief if you’ve been feeling dry, and irritated, and inflamed in any of those tissues. Okay.

A Gentle Galactagogues with Mild Phytoestrogenic Effects

Ryn (31:24):
Now fennel is also a galactagogue. And that’s a fancy herbal term to say that it’s going to increase the production of breast milk in someone who is breastfeeding. Fennel is a pretty mild galactagogue, and so it’s often paired with other herbs if that’s the purpose someone has. You might see it paired together with fenugreek, or a plant called goats rue, or other plants that are stronger acting as galactagogue plants when that’s the goal, right? Okay. Now to a small extent, fennel can help with menstrual cramps and with related symptoms, including some symptoms that are less to do with menstruation and more to do with menopause. All of this has contributed to the reputation of fennel as a phytoestrogenic herb. I want to make it clear that this effect is small. That fennel is not an herb where you’re going to take a few capsules, or you’re going to drink some tea, and you’re going to get massive shifts in your estrogen ecology inside of your body either for good or for ill, right? There are ways that you could accomplish that, but they would usually require very heavy, very, very high consumption. And the cases where this has actually become noticeable have usually paired high consumption with small body size or incomplete physiological development. So, there is a case in our Botanical Safety Handbook of well, I’m just going to read out what was written up there.

Ryn (33:08):
So, this was a case series – so a number of different people studied – of premature thelarche. So that’s isolated breast development with no other clinical signs of sexual maturation. And this took place along with some elevated estradiol levels. And this was in a group of four young girls from age five month old to five years old. And they had each been given two to three cups of fennel tea per day for a span of between four months and two years. Okay. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but what they’re saying is there was a family. There were four young girls – the oldest was five, the youngest was only five months old – and they had been given multiple cups of fennel tea every day for an extended period of time. And that did cause enough of a change in their young, small, undeveloped bodies that they were developing breast tissue earlier than anybody would expect. And in terms of their blood, there was elevated levels of one of the forms of estrogen in their bodies. They were not menstruating at five years old. There were not other indicators that this was a significant impact on their system. This kind of thing, based on other information we have about the influence of phytoestrogens, including on very young people, including on people in adulthood and elders in different stages of life, this type of effect is quite transient once the herb stops being taken. So, it’s not the kind of thing where these girls’ hormonal systems were now deranged for the rest of their life, or they were deeply damaged by this exposure. This was the kind of thing that would even out in the span of a few weeks to a month, something like that.

Ryn (35:00):
So again, I bring this case to you to say that yes, there are circumstances where the phytoestrogen compounds of fennel could exert an effect that starts to become real, that starts to become significant. But think of the dose, think of the body weight, think of the age, think of the physiological development of these bodies under study in this particular instance. And recognize that in most cases, in basically any case that one could imagine, fennel is going to be a very, very safe herb when consumed in anything approaching normal amounts. Which for an adult may be a quart of tea a day, right? Usually it’s given in formula with a bunch of other herbs, right? Maybe we have a digestive blend. And there’s some ginger, and there’s some fennel, and there’s some catnip, and there’s some plantain leaf, and that’s all in there together. That would never concern me as a clinician. I would never be like hmm, this might start to mess around with your estrogen levels. We better watch out for that. No. A blend, something like that, that’s not going to be a problem. Or if someone’s taking a dropperful of tincture before or after meals to get that release of digestive tension. To help them to not feel bloated with gas and to pass that and get the relief from it, that’s like a standard way to work with fennel. That’s extremely unlikely to cause any clinically significant changes in your endocrine system, okay?

Ryn (36:31):
So I’m dwelling on this just because a lot of times when there is any indication that an herb has phytoestrogenic activity or that it interfaces with your endocrine system, with your hormones in any way at all, then people feel very anxious about it. They feel very worried. Or they make outsized claims, like all you need to do to resolve all your menopause symptoms is to drink fennel tea once a day. Nah, I don’t think so. Maybe for somebody if they’re lucky, that could do enough in their body to make them feel comfortable again. But most people who are getting hot flashes, or headaches, or other kinds of effects of the menopause are not going to feel totally resolved by a cup of fennel once a day, right? And so on both sides, there can be overstatement of what these things can do. Okay. So, there are some thoughts on fennel. Okay, very good.

#34 Oats: Milky Oats vs. Oatstraw, Nervous System & Nutritive Support

Ryn (37:25):
And now let’s turn to oats. So, number 34 on the list here is oats/oatstraw. These are derived from the same plant, Avena sativa, and oats is one that’s pretty, pretty consistently present on the top seller list. It does move up and down. In this particular period the sales had actually increased by 58% over the prior year. So, there was some increase in interest in that particular herb during that span of time. And when we look at the labels, and the marketing language, and the pamphlets and stuff about these products, we find that they’re primarily oriented towards nervous support or in some cases cognitive support. It’s kind of a subset, I suppose. I do want to say all of this is separate from oat bran products, which are simply fiber supplements. And we could fill in or refer back to previous discussions in this series about psyllium husk and the fiber there. And the way that yeah, that can have benefits if you have a low fiber diet, or if you just want to get a little bit of extra for constipation. And if you’re doing it consistently, it can also have some benefits in terms of cholesterol and things like that. This would be basically just another fiber, right? So, we’re going to set oat bran aside because that’s not what’s actually under discussion when we’re talking about supplements and extracts of oat or oatstraw. Okay.

Ryn (39:00):
So oat is well known to modern herbalists as kind of one of two things. Either a relaxing and restorative nervine, and that’s in the context of what’s referred to as milky oats. Those are when the seeds have matured, and you go out to the field and get them at just the right moment. You can squeeze them, and a milky kind of a sap juice will come out of them. And that’s the moment when you want to grab them, and harvest them, and process them or extract them to capture the chemistry of that moment. And that can exert this effect to be a restorative nervine. Or if you want a real fancy word, a nervous trophorestorative. It’s going to re rebuild and maintain the function of the nerves. So, that’s the one side. The other side is, in my opinion, simply as a nutritive agent. And that’s where we’re talking about the oatstraw. Now, these two things are not, again, in my opinion – and you’ll see why I keep giving that caveat here in just a moment – they’re not interchangeable. So, first off, just in terms of energetics, oat straw is a drying remedy, whereas fresh milky oats have more of a moistening quality to the body. Now, it’s worth mentioning that one of the most common ways to consume fresh milky oats is going to be in tincture. That’s how you preserve it, right? We’re going to capture that chemistry, we’re going to preserve it. We’re going to make it portable, and you can take it wherever you go. You can take a squirt. You’re all set. So, the herb itself and the extract from the herb has that moistening quality. But remember that the alcohol has a drying quality. So, there’s a little bit of mitigation that occurs in that case.

Ryn (40:47):
To turn back to the oat straw though, right? This is basically the stems of the plant. And there are a lot of folks who will say no, no, no. This is almost as good as the milky oat products. It’s a lot cheaper. It’s a lot easier to work with and get your hands on and everything. And yeah, it’ll restore, it’ll relax, it’ll calm your anxious nerves and so on. In my opinion, in my experience, what I observe when I see people work with this is that to the extent that it can have those restorative or calming effects on your nervous system, to me this seems primarily due to the provision of mineral content that oat can provide. And that’s a really fundamental form of nourishment for your body at large, but for your nervous system in particular, right? And so I feel like it’s doing that rather than through some kind of direct relaxant or direct sedative activity on your nerves or on your emotional state. But to be clear, especially in a body that’s lacking mineral nutrition, the effects of providing those minerals in a form your body can absorb, and utilize, and circulate, and work with that can have a really significant effect on your nerve tissue, the way it functions, and especially the way it communicates. And this essentially has to do with the fact that your nerves are going to utilize mineral molecules or mineral atoms in order to send their signals, right? In order for them to convey electrical charge and send a signal, send a communication along the line of the nerve and up into the brain, right?

Ryn (42:31):
And so when someone is very deficient in mineral intake, or when they have very unbalanced mineral intake. Like they get a lot of calcium, but they get almost no magnesium, or potassium, or sodium for that matter, right? A lot of sodium, not a lot of potassium. It’s a pretty common standard effect of a standard American diet. Same thing with too much calcium, not enough magnesium. When those things happen, it can be difficult for the nerves to communicate clearly. It might be easier for them to get overstimulated and harder for them to quiet down or to relax. And so if that person in that nutritive state goes and works with, I would say, any nutritive herb that can provide that mineral content in a form they can absorb and utilize. Then they might find themselves more calm, more stable, and better able to maintain, right? So, in my opinion, in my understanding of what’s going on with this plant, that seems to be the major way that it brings about these feelings of peace, and calm, and comfort. Okay? And so that’s going to be more noticeable in people who are a little more mineral deficient or have a diet that’s less nourishing or less complete, which is not a small number of people, it’s worth understanding.

Ryn (43:57):
All right. Now, as for the milky oat tops, so I was saying earlier that the kind of ideal way to work with them would be you’re out there in the field, you’re going to gather them. You’re going to process them or extract them as soon as possible after the moment of harvest, right? Because there you’re more confident, you’re more certain that you are preserving the complete chemistry as it exists in that moment. Plant chemicals change through the life of the plant, and especially when the plant dries or when it’s processed in other various ways. We get shifts in the shape of a molecule. We get a little bend on the side of a little ring or a little tail that exists on some molecule inside of a plant as the plant material goes through those different types of changes. And so because of this, there is a fair amount of debate amongst herbalist about whether you can take milky oat tops, dry them, and preserve their particular actions on the nervous system. I am not going to go too far into that, but I can say this much. At the very least we can feel very confident to say that if we want those nervous trophorestorative actions. If we want to rebuild nerves that have been frazzled, damaged, irritated to such a degree and for such a long time that they’re no longer functioning normally. If we want to restore healthy, peaceful action of our nerves and we’re going to work with oats to do it. Then milky oats tinctured or otherwise preserved immediately after harvest is going to be the best thing to do that with. Okay.

Gluten Sensitivity Considerations with Oats

Ryn (45:39):
There’s another question that also comes up whenever we talk about oats, and that is the question of gluten sensitivity, right? So, the first thing here is to say this. In modern parlance and common language, when we say gluten, we are using a general term, but we’re actually using it in a more restricted sense. So, technically speaking, gluten just means the proteins that we find in grains. When people say gluten-free, and this is the legislative meaning of the term, what they’re actually meaning is a little more specific. Because there is a version of gluten that we could with more precision called gliadin. And we could say that is the gluten, which is found in wheat, and barley, and rye, right? So, normally people just say those are the grains that contain gluten. It would be a little more specific to say those are the grains that contain gliadin, a particularly troublesome form of gluten. Which can give people digestive upsets or something a lot more significant and serious than that if you have celiac disease, or if you have an autoimmune response to the gliadin or quote-unquote gluten protein. And this is where we get into gluten-free diets and all of that kind of thing, right?

Ryn (46:57):
Now in oats, the gluten there, the protein that we find is called avenin. And it’s not exactly the same as gliadin. It doesn’t have all of the same pieces and all the same arrangements, but it does share a significant structural similarity. There’s kind of a backbone to it that is very similar if not identical to gliadin. So, we have gluten, we have gliadin, we have avenin. They’re not exactly the same, but they’re not exactly a hundred percent different either. And what this means is that some people who react badly to gluten or badly to gliadin may also react to avenin. The practical outcome of this is that if we’re going to guide somebody through a food allergy elimination. And they’re willing to give up gluten for a month and see how their body responds over that span of time. And then if necessary to do a reintroduction to say what happens if I avoid this for 40 days, or 35 days, or whatever, and then I reintroduce it? Because when you do that process, it often makes it much more clear if you are having a reaction to the problem. Like you’ve kind of been humming along. You’ve been eating a little bit of it or maybe a lot of it every day. And maybe you have some inflammatory symptoms or different things that are a result of that, but it’s not super clear to you just based on your habits. So, you eliminate it. And again, maybe you get a really palpable shift. You’re like wow, I don’t have gut cramping anymore or spinning out from the gut influencing other systems of your body. Maybe you’re like wow, I feel less anxiety. I have a better capability to focus. My sleep has improved. I’m not getting eruptions on my skin the way I used to do, right? Those are all things that can routinely happen if somebody has a gluten sensitivity, and they give it up.

Ryn (48:50):
But sometimes it’s a little less obvious or a little less superficial. And you’re like I think I feel a little different, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. So, you do a rechallenge, and you introduce it again. And you eat it for a few days. And again, if you do have a sensitivity, it’s often going to generate more obvious symptoms after a period of elimination than it was prior to that time, okay? So, this is a standard thing for us to do with clients and walk them through it, give them some tips and guidance to help them to accomplish that as a personal experiment. To say is this a part of my trouble? Is this a part of what’s contributing to the things I’m experiencing and that I want to change? Okay. So, because of the degree of similarity between avenin and gliadin, we generally advise if you’re going to do a gluten elimination or an assessment like that, then you should avoid oats during that period as well. Even though you will see all these products out there that say this is made with gluten-free oats certified, right? What that labeling means is these are gliadin-free oats. And what they’re really addressing there is cross-contamination. So, instead of having one factory where today we process wheat and make it into flour, and tomorrow we process oats and make it into flour. And we technically clean the machines, but there can be enough residue left over that somebody with celiac or some strong gluten sensitivity is going to react to it. So, rather than doing that, if we want to get certified gluten-free oats, we make sure that the whole factory, all the machines, the containers that we transport it in, everything is only used for oat and never used for wheat, or barley, or rye, right? That’s what gluten-free oats means. Yes, okay.

Ryn (50:40):
So again, if somebody’s doing their initial elimination, we might say okay, avoid wheat, avoid barley, avoid rye, avoid anything made with them. Avoid anything that says gluten, and also there’s a bunch of other terms that are used in processed food products to refer to gluten. And we need to be familiar with those as well. But then also – and this is a step that you might not have considered if you were going to do this elimination diet on your own – I want you to also avoid oats in all forms. Even the ones that say that they’re gluten-free. Do that for a month. And then if you’re hoping that you’re one of the people who has a strong gliadin response but a weak or a minimal avenin response. Then the first thing you do in your reintroduction phase is you try a little bit of oats, right? Try them in the forms you enjoy them or the forms that you would be hoping to include in your life on a regular or occasional basis. See how you react to that. Give yourself a few days to consume them. Give yourself a week or two weeks to observe and see any reactions that emerge from that. And do that before you rechallenge with wheat, or barley, or rye. So, it’s a separate introduction, a separate experiment. And you can assess that distinctly from the gliadin or from the other types of gluten that you might expose yourself to. We found that to be very helpful. And in that same phase, we also say yeah, I do want you to avoid milky oat tincture. I do want you to avoid oatstraw long infusion tea blends. Because we just want to be as clear as possible about what’s coming into your system, and about what you may be exposed to, right?

Ryn (52:30):
Remember that the gluten is going to be the protein found in the grain. So, there quote-unquote shouldn’t be some in the body, in the stems of the oat plant. But here I want to refer you back to our previous discussion about wheatgrass. So, that was one of the top selling herbs that we looked at earlier in the series. And there I said basically the same thing. That yeah, technically, supposedly that protein shouldn’t be found in that part of the plant, or it shouldn’t be there in a concentration that matters. But when we’re doing this kind of experimental elimination and rechallenge process, we want to get it down to the last molecule. We want to be as complete as possible, so we have the clearest data to work with, the clearest input, the clearest response. And so that’s why we go to that level when we’re walking somebody through that initial stage. Maybe for them the oat that they reintroduce into their life is going to be oatstraw infusion alongside their nettle, and dandelion, and a pinch of horsetail. Or maybe it’s going to be some milky oats tincture alongside skullcap and evening primrose as a nerve trophorestorative blend, right? That might be the extent of the work that they want to do with oat. And so that’s the first thing to test. See how your body responds to that. It’s all about individual variations.

Nervous Trophorestorative Plant Substitutes

Ryn (53:49):
Okay. By the way, in that last moment there I mentioned two other nerve trophorestorative plants, right? So, it is an action, it is not something that only oats can ever do to rebuild the nervous system function. To take nerves that are jangly,, and agitated and easily irritated, and that and calm, and soothe, and protect them. That is an action that many herbs can exert. Skullcap is a nice, effective herb for that if you’re taking it consistently over long periods of time. This is one of those actions of herbs that you don’t get from one dose. You have to take it over time in order for it to give this to you, right? So, skullcap is a nice standout nervous trophorestorative. Damiana can be one. St. John’s wort can be one. And I want to close with one of my favorites, which is evening primrose. And here I am not talking about the seed oil, all right? I’m not talking about evening primrose oil, or evening primrose seed extracts, or anything like that. Although, when we’re talking about herbs and supplements in the marketplace, that’s the majority of what you’re going to find for evening primrose. It’s kind of difficult to find evening primrose leaf to make your tea from. Or evening primrose aerial parts like leaf and flower tincture to work with and include in your protocol or mix into a formula.

Ryn (55:15):
But this is a very common, weedy herb. It’s easy to grow. It grows in lots of different latitudes and ecosystems. And I find it to be very, very helpful for this exact action as a nervous trophorestorative. And so, when I have somebody, and they’re like oh no, I love my milky aats tincture, but I do want to do a really thorough investigation into food sensitivity and start with gluten. And okay, that means no oat. And ah, that means no milky oat tincture? What I’ll say to them is let’s get you some evening primrose, aerial parts, leaf and flower tincture, and you can take that instead. And in my experience, its effects are very, very similar, causing the same kind of calm, comfort, relaxation, emotional steadiness, emotional endurance that people are looking for when they gravitate toward milky oats. And when they read and listen to what most herbalist have to say about milky oats, the things that attract them to it, I feel very strongly that you can get those things from evening primrose preparations as well. So, that may involve growing and harvesting your own. It may involve finding a patch of evening primrose and a place you feel comfortable gathering from. And harvesting those leaves and flowers and either drying them for tea or extracting them – best from fresh plant – into tincture and having that available to you. But I just can’t say enough good things about it. It’s one of my personal favorites. And if you’ve been feeling really attached to milky oats but considering doing one of these elimination experiments, then I would say put that in there as your first option. Okay.

Ryn (57:02):
All right. So, that’s our three for today. If I execute my plan as intended, we’ll have two more episodes before we finish this main list of the top 40 herbs. And then probably an addendum or two on that as well. Because there’s also the natural channel list in addition to this mainstream list. And there’s a few other things that I wanted to bring into the discussion here as well. But we’re getting close to the end. We’re moving through. And we’ll have a few more on this range before we’re done with the topic. All right. That’s going to be it for today. Thank you for listening. And we’ll be back soon with a little bit more Holistic Herbalism podcast for you. Until then take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And remember there’s always more than one herb. All right, bye.