Podcast 278: Tulsi for Everyone!

Life it pretty overwhelming right now, and it’s affecting the way our brains function. When we can’t focus or can’t remember things, we typically blame it on things like perimenopause or ADHD – but the literal firehose of data that comes at us every day is an even bigger cause: it’s a LOT for our brains to process!
Tulsi can help!

Truly one of the most versatile and multifaceted herbs on the planet, tulsi is a must-know plant for any herbalist. Its capacity as a nervine is immediately palpable, as it helps us release tension and anxiety without causing any sedation. When taken over the long term, tulsi expresses itself as an adaptogen – helping us to move more easily out of a stress response, back to a comfortable and calm baseline. Tulsi is also very flexible, and can be formulated with lots of other nervines and mental health herbs to create a perfectly personalized formula.

Some of our favorite herbs to pair with tulsi include:

• Ground ivy – for moving the lymph in your head (ear/nose/throat) – and maybe even the glymph in your brain!
• Elderflower – for draining stuck fluids from the head, and for releasing tense heat
• Ginkgo – for increasing blood flow to the brain and protecting the health of nerves
• Rosemary – for cutting through the fog and sharpening the mind
• Peppermint – for a breath of cool air moving through your mind, and for releasing tension held in the belly

Still feeling stressed? Check out our new Stress Management course! Learn all about adaptogens, nervines, restoratives, and herbs to lift your spirits in this inexpensive, focused course. It covers everything you need to get through stressful times – and to help the ones you love, 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!

PS: If you’re in the Boston area, check out Herbstalk on June 6th & 7th! Ryn will be teaching a class there on Affordable Analogues for Expensive Herbs, and the conference as a whole is very much worth visiting. It’s the last Herbstalk ever, so don’t miss it!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:00):
Hi, I’m Katja. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts. Today Ryn is working on his presentation for a local herb conference called Herbstalk. He’s going to be talking about affordable analogs for expensive herbs, and that’s part of our accessible herbalism work. We’re going to be talking about that in the podcast feed later this summer as well. So, if you’re not here locally, and you can’t go to that conference, don’t worry. We’re going to be talking about it here too. But today what I want to talk to you about is tulsi. You know, if you have listened to the podcast before, you know that we talk a lot about individual solutions. Like every body is different, and so you need to find the right herb for the problem that the person’s having. And it’s not going to be the same herb for every person. And all of that is true and important. But today I’m going to throw all that out the window, and I’m going to talk about tulsi for everyone. Okay, don’t worry. At the end I’m also going to talk about some other herbs that go along with tulsi, or even if you don’t like tulsi you can work with instead. But the reason that I’m going to talk about it for everyone is because right now we are all sharing some of the same problems. And I think a big sort of bold topic header at the top is that our brains are full to overflowing, and it is making it really hard for us to really do anything.

Katja (02:07):
Okay, so I’m very excited to talk about it. But before I do, I’m supposed to say the thing. And the thing is the reclaimer, that I’m not a doctor. I’m an herbalist and a holistic educator. 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 you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t really exist as an objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, your experiences, and your goals. So, keep in mind that we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic right way that everyone should adhere to, because everybody is different. So, the things that we’re talking about today may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to experiment with further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and also your own personal responsibility. Which does not mean that you are to blame for your state of health right now. And it doesn’t mean that you’re alone on the journey of figuring out how to get to where you want to be. 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, is always your choice to make.

Information Overload Everywhere

Katja (03:34):
All right, tulsi for everyone. Are you ready? So, the thing that made me think about this, I was trying to write a newsletter this week, and my brain was just mush. And I looked at my inbox because, you know, you’re trying to do the thing you’re supposed to do, and you can’t think of how to do it. So, what do you do? You check your email, and then you check your this, and then you check your that. You check all the things, right? So, I’m checking my email. And I was like you know, there are 7,719 emails in this inbox. And I just thought about that number for a moment. It’s like that number didn’t happen overnight. It’s been like that for quite some time. But it’s kind of an overwhelming number. Like how is any person supposed to process 7,719 pieces of, not even pieces of information but like letters of information, you know? And except that then I was thinking about your inbox probably looks exactly the same. Like all of our inboxes have thousands and thousands of emails, and most of them we don’t read because it’s impossible. But even the number of ones that we do read, it’s kind of overwhelming, right? It’s just like an enormous amount of data that we’re supposed to process every day. And it’s not just email. It’s also whatever you do for work, and then it’s all the people who depend on you, and then it’s all the news coming at you from all the different directions.

Katja (05:21):
My point is just that I was suddenly overwhelmed with how much information processing we are expected to do on a daily basis. And I don’t think that our brains were meant to handle this much data every day. You know, kind of like when you’re working on a computer, and you’re doing something that’s too big for the computer, and then the computer’s really slow. And you’re clicking on the thing, and nothing’s happening because the computer’s really slow. Because the thing that it’s trying to do, whatever the calculation or the whatever is using up all of the processing power. Okay, that but in our brains, right? And then I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about how every time that I log onto social media, and I’m sure this is the same for you too especially. Especially because I am a woman of a certain age. And so my social media wants to, like I look at Instagram, and it wants to tell me that I should wear makeup specially made for older women and whatever else about my wrinkles, and my hair, and everything so that I can still say beautiful as if I’m still young. And I don’t need all that, thank you. I don’t need to be reminded that I’m whatever age I am now, 50 whatever. Just stop. I don’t want the makeup. I don’t want it. But the other thing that I see all the time is oh, is your brain overwhelmed? It’s because of the perimenopause. Or oh, is it hard for you to focus? You have ADHD and all these things. And like okay, perimenopause is real. It has effects, and those effects are real, fine. ADHD is real also, like yes. But I just look at all that stuff, and I think you know, maybe, but maybe it’s also that I’m supposed to process like a cajillion billion things every hour of all this information coming into my brain. And so maybe when I get up, and go into the kitchen, and get to the kitchen and say hold on. Why am I here? Why did I walk in here? I wanted something, what was it? And then I say oh, well, my brain doesn’t work. It’s perimenopause. Because right, that’s what we all do. Or if you’re not of a certain age yet, then you say oh, well my brain doesn’t work. It’s ADHD or whatever, right?

Katja (08:15):
Well, I am in perimenopause, but I don’t think that’s why I couldn’t remember why I went into the kitchen. I think the reason I couldn’t remember why I went into the kitchen is because there were 16 other things in my brain in that moment, and I just couldn’t hold on to that 17th thing. And yes, okay, then you stand there, and you say, hmm. Why was I here? And maybe it comes back to you, and maybe it doesn’t. And then you go back to, in my case, my desk. And then I say oh, well, that was dumb. And then five minutes later I’m like oh, that’s what I needed. And then I… Right? Okay. I think that so much of the overwhelm and so much of people saying things like oh, I can’t this or that because my brain just doesn’t work right. There are lots of factors for that, but I really think that one of them is just there is so much to process every day. And this is why I’m going to say tulsi for everyone. Because yes, we do need personalized solutions. Yes, the same solution is not going to work for every person. But in this one regard, we are all people dealing with the same problem. There are other things. All of us have our own unique, weird brains that work their own unique, weird ways and do not come with user’s manuals. And so whether you have ADHD, or whether you are neurodiverse, or whether you are perimenopausal, or whatever else, we all have to figure out just how to use our brains. True.

Your Brain On Overload

Katja (10:06):
But we’re all dealing with information overload. And tulsi can help with that because there is actually a processing center in your brain. It’s called the hippocampus. And that is where we process the things that we experience every day. So, all of your everything that happens in a day, you can imagine the hippocampus as the computer that is responsible. You can imagine that your brain is not one computer. It’s many computers, right? It’s like a whole room full of computers. And one of the computers is responsible for moving your right hand. And another computer is responsible for your ability to speak, and process language, and whatever. And okay, this is an analogy but okay. And so the hippocampus is the computer that’s responsible for taking all of the things that happened in your day and deciding which of them is going to get stored in long-term storage, and which of them can be thrown out, and which of them you might need five minutes from now but not five years from now, and all that kind of stuff. It’s about literally the data processing of your brain. And this is also, like there’s a real tie in to PTSD here. Which is that this part of your brain can get damaged, especially if you’re under stress for a long period of time. And then if you have a traumatic event, anybody who has a traumatic event, this part of your brain is going to be involved in the processing of that trauma. But if this part of your brain is like gummed up and not working as well as it can, then that contributes to the likelihood of PTSD. Because part of that syndrome is that you’re not able to process the trauma. Like you’re stuck in the present of the trauma because you can’t process it into some kind of long-term storage.

Katja (12:14):
All right, well that was a little tangent there, but that’s fine. So, the reason that I’m talking about this part of your brain is because tulsi actually improves the function of that part of your brain. And the funny thing is that stress decreases the function of that part of your brain. So okay, well, we’re all pretty stressed right now. Like I don’t think I know anybody who is not pretty stressed right now. And so all of us probably have degraded hippocampus function, right? And on top of it all of us are being expected to process so much information. Because the thing is that your brain can’t really tell the difference between something that happened to you directly today. Like the car that like slammed on its brakes in front of you, and then you also had to slam on your brakes. That happened to you. Versus something you see on social media, or on the news, or whatever that did not happen to you, but you are watching it. Obviously we know logically oh, that didn’t happen to me. That happened to somebody else, and I’m watching the video versus this thing happened to me. But parts of your brain, especially the part of your brain that is involved in stress response and threat response, can’t really tell the difference between something that you observed happening to somebody else, and you just looked at it on your phone while you were sitting on your couch, and something that actually happened to you. So, this part of your brain has to do a lot of processing to figure out what all this stuff is and where it goes. Like, how do I deal with it? Do I stash it? Do I throw it away? Do I what? Okay, so the problem is we have this part of the brain. It processes stuff. We have too much stuff to process. This part of the brain slows down when we’re under a bunch of stress. We’re all under a bunch of stress. And that’s where we get to the solution of tulsi for everyone, because tulsi makes this part of the brain function better.

Tulsi for Everyone* & Take a Lot

Katja (14:32):
Okay? So, that’s our like starting point. I have not actually… Now it’s time to investigate this, right? Like we’ve set everything up here, now it’s time to investigate it. So, the first thing that I want to say is when I say tulsi for everyone, it does have a little asterisk next to it. Because tulsi is a super safe herb that is unlikely to have allergic reactions and is safe with lots of different kinds of medications. So, if you’re taking medications, usually you don’t have to be concerned about a drug interaction with tulsi. But there is one thing that is worth mentioning, and that is that tulsi also improves the way that you process glucose. Now for most people that’s great because most of us eat too much sugar. And having an herb that like oh, and on the side I’m also going to help you deal with all that sugar is like wow, two for one, right? But if you’re a medicated diabetic, and you take insulin, it doesn’t mean that you can’t work with tulsi. It just means that you should make sure that you are testing your blood sugar levels regularly. And if you’re not taking insulin, but you’re taking something like metformin for a Type II diabetes medication, then also make sure that you’re testing your blood glucose levels regularly. Because the thing is that if you start taking tulsi, your body might get better at processing glucose. And so if you are taking metformin, et cetera, your dose might not need to be as high. And you would see that in a glucose test. You would notice like oh hey, my numbers are consistently lower now. And if you’re going to keep working with tulsi, then you can talk to your doctor about that. If you are taking insulin, there is no herb that will stop your need for insulin. If you have to take insulin, you have to take insulin. But it might reduce the amount of insulin that you have to take. You know, similar to if you have a day or two where you eat no sugar and very low carb, that’s also going to change the number of units of insulin that you need, right? So, you still need insulin those days just not as much. So okay, so this is not like an unsafe kind of thing. It’s not like an interaction per se. It just means that especially when you’re calculating how much insulin you need, it’s really important that you test so that you get it right. Because those values might change if you’re working consistently with tulsi.

Katja (17:24):
All right. So, that’s the caveat there. But that said, I really do recommend it. And I’m going to say right from the beginning, take a lot. Not a little bit, take a lot. So, the definition of a lot here is going to be at least a quart of tea daily. And if it’s tincture, boy, I would say three or four droppersful every hour. And you might be like wow, that’s a lot of tulsi. It is. But when we’re thinking about just being super overwhelmed with everything that’s coming in, well, a lot is coming in, and so we need a lot of processing power boost, right? Another way that you can do it… And it’s funny because I think maybe this even kind of kicked off the thinking in my mind. Over the last three months or so I’ve been experimenting with encapsulated tulsi. I’ve been taking, and they don’t give me anything for saying this, but it just is what I took. New Chapter has a liquid concentrated extract. It’s like liquid in a capsule, right? And Gaia used to make one. I don’t know if they still do. But the one that I’ve been taking is the New Chapter one. And this kind of liquid capsule, it’s a concentrated liquid extract so that you’re able to get a higher dose in the capsule than if you just had ground-up, powdered tulsi in there. And I have been taking three or four of them a day. And wow, the reason that I started it was because in general I’m not a huge fan of capsules. There are a few things that are really handy in a capsule. And it’s not like capsules are bad, or evil, or anything like that. Just usually I’m a tea person. And I want to encourage people to work with tea because also it means that you’re taking a minute and making a cup of something warm for yourself. There’s a whole ritual aspect to it, and the I’m going to take a break for a minute while I get up and get my tea sort of thing. There’s other aspects than just the herb itself that help with the various parts of self-care. So, I’m a big fan of tea.

Katja (20:10):
But I was like you know, I really want to see how these new capsules, like these better extracts that we have today, how do they compare to tea? Do they have as strong of an effect? Is this a viable option for my clients? Because the reality is that when you work with clients, a lot of times they’re too busy to make tea, right? So, as clinical herbalists we need to experiment with things and see is this really a good substitute? So okay, so the last three months or so I’ve been taking these capsules for this reason, to see if it would be a good substitute. And I have really been surprised at the buoyancy of my mood, if that makes sense. Even though things are stressful in the world and bananas really, that I have stayed much more positive than I would have expected for myself. That I have also really noticed a shift in focus and a shift in yes, being able to process things, which was expected. But the thing that I think was a little less expected was also being fault tolerant, like better able to handle it when I’m not processing things well. So, instead of getting upset because oh, I can’t focus today. And now I’m kind of like spiraling and feeling bad about whatever. Like I’m bad. I’m not doing the thing. To like what I’ve noticed is that it is so much easier, and I don’t even really have to think that much about it. It’s so much easier to just say hey, I’m spiraling. You know what I should do? I should get up, and I should walk around for like 10 minutes. And then I can come back to this and try again, and it’s going to be all right. And maybe it’s all right, or maybe I have to walk around for 10 minutes again, you know? But those kinds of shifts, that kind of oh, this isn’t working. I’m going to stop trying to make it work. I’m going to take an action, and then I’m going to come back to this. That kind of strategy has been coming effortlessly. So, both I have been more able to focus but also more able to deal with it when I couldn’t focus well.

Katja (23:04):
That surprised me because I really did not expect the capsules to be as effective as tea. But in fact, okay, I’ve been taking three or four of them a day. And so I suppose I could calculate, in fact, I definitely can calculate. They give you some math there about the equivalency of their extract. So, I’m sure that I could calculate exactly like what kind of comparison that is to tea, but I haven’t done that yet. Well okay, now I probably should go and do that after I record this. But the point is that man, I was really in my tea is best place, and this has really been working. Now, I’ve been talking about tulsi a lot lately to students, and clients, and whatever. And lots of people have been working with tea or with tincture and also finding really good results. So, my conclusion here is not everybody should be taking tulsi capsules. But instead hey, if you feel like you are overwhelmed and having trouble processing everything that’s coming at you, maybe try high doses of tulsi. Whether you take it in capsules because that’s easiest or whatever, or whether you take it in tea, or in tincture, or some other way. Maybe you make an electuary. Maybe you make like a syrup or whatever. It’s all cool. But take a lot, take a lot. Just if you’re a medicated diabetic, make sure that you’re checking your blood glucose levels.

Stagnant Lymph & Brain Fog

Katja (24:49):
Okay, but you know, you know that we love to personalize. So, of course I have to add a couple other things in here, right? And today the thing I want to add in is herbs that help move things. I guess tulsi is one of these as well. Herbs that help move things in your head. And so tulsi is absolutely moving things in the brain. And then this other category that I want to look at is herbs that stimulate glymphatic action. And so glymph is the lymph of your brain, right? So, your whole body has a lymphatic system, that’s the fluid in your body that is not blood. So the fluid that is carrying the trash, the fluid that is carrying whatever was in the interstitial stuff, and it needs to get to the kidneys so that you can pee it out or get to the wherever it’s going, to the liver. It’s not only trash. Also the immune system uses the lymphatic channels as a transportation mechanism as well. But if you categorize it largely as the trash system, you wouldn’t really be wrong. So, you have all kinds of lymph in your head. And you’re probably most familiar, the lymph nodes that you’re probably most… So, we have lymphatic vessels, and then we have lymphatic nodes, which is kind of like a place where a lot of vessels come together for a gathering station. And then it’s going to continue on from there.

Katja (26:32):
Okay, so the lymph nodes that you’re probably most familiar with are the ones that are right under your jaw, kind of towards the back of your jaw. That when you were a kid if you were getting sick, then your parent or your guardian would feel your lymph nodes there. And if they were swollen, then they were like oh okay, yeah, you’re sick. You should stay home. Or oh, your lymph nodes are swollen. We better take your temperature or whatever. So, those are probably the ones that you’re most familiar with, but you have them all over your body and in lots of places in your head. And so if you think about a lot of times when you get various kinds of headaches and migraines, especially if they are ones that have a lot of pressure. Then a lot of times that is stagnant fluid that is stuck in your head, and that’s lymph. And so if you think about throughout your head you have these drainage tubes that are just heading down. They go along behind your ears. They go down your neck. They collect along with the ones at the bottom of your jaw. They go down to some lymph nodes at your collarbone and down through your body. Ultimately they’re going to get your kidneys, right? And all of that fluid has to keep moving. If it doesn’t keep moving, then we have two problems.

Katja (28:08):
One is all the trash is just sitting there rotting, wherever it is, right? So, imagine that all of the trash in your head, normal trash just like in your house. You’re not doing anything toxic. It’s just normal trash because in a day you open a package, or you whatever. Okay, so this is also just the normal trash that every cell produces as it’s going through its day. But if it’s not being carried away, then it’s just piling up, and creating pressure, and creating inflammation. Okay, so that’s one problem. But then the other problem is now that you have all this trash piling up in your head, you can’t get any fresh materials up into your brain. So, you literally aren’t getting enough oxygen, and you aren’t getting enough nourishment into those areas. So, that also causes… If you don’t have enough oxygen in your leg, because you’re like sitting on your leg, and so you’ve reduced the blood flow. What happens? Your leg falls asleep. And then it’s like really, really asleep. And then you try to walk on it, and then you feel unstable, right? Okay. But we can get that same thing going in the head just by creating a traffic jam because we didn’t clear the trash out, and so nothing new can get in there. And if you think about it that way, doesn’t it suddenly make a lot of sense? Okay, now listen. This is not the only way to get brain fog. There’s a lot of different aspects of brain fog, and also brain fog is not like one thing. We use that phrase to describe something that we’re feeling, but then there’s a lot of different mechanisms that can lead to that kind of feeling, right? Okay, so I want to be clear that I am not saying that this is the cause of all brain fog. However, this is a cause of a lot of brain fog. And if you are like man, I just can’t think. I feel like my brain is out of breath. Okay, well, is there a lot of stuff coming into it? That’s going to create more trash. Because all your cells are trying to work faster in your brain to process everything. And if they’re not getting the trash taken away, then they’re not getting anything fresh. And so literally kind of like your head’s falling asleep, but you’re still awake trying to process data.

Herbal Add-Ons

Katja (30:48):
All right? Did all that make sense? Because now we’ve got herbs that can help you with that. And some of my favorites are one is ground ivy. And this is the perfect time of year for ground ivy. Well, at least it is in New England. Right now all of the ground ivy here is flowering and beautiful. Ground ivy, in a lot of parts of the country it’s called creeping Charlie. And in Europe it’s called gil-over-the-ground or alehoof sometimes. Okay, so yeah, one of my really favorite herbs when you feel like everything is stuck in your head, and nothing is flowing the way that it should. Whether that is emotional, mental, or physical in terms of feeling that you have that stuck kind of headache. And elderflower is another one that I really love for this. It’s not elderflower time here yet, but south of us it probably is. It certainly is. So, depending on where you live, you can go get elderflowers now or soon. And it’s specifically the flowers here, not the berries. The flowers have this dispersive effect. And again, they’re helping to get that fluid moving. These two together are so helpful for me, for my type of migraines, for the type of migraine that I most commonly get, because it’s exactly that. It’s that stagnation pattern that so often comes when I’ve been at the computer for too long trying to deal with too much information. Everything is getting really stagnant. I’m not moving around. And then the pressure is building, and building, and building, in my head. Yeah, then it’s migraine time, not very fun. So okay, so tulsi is moving stuff inside the brain itself. Ground ivy and well, tulsi is moving a lot of other things too, but we’re focusing on that area, the hippocampus in the brain. Ground ivy and elderflower are two that I want to focus on for the lymphatic/glymphatic. The glymph is the part that’s in the actual brain, like inside the brain itself. And lymph is the stuff that’s outside of it, all throughout your ears, and your lymph nodes in your neck, and stuff like that. So, in your head you have a meeting of both of those.

Katja (33:39):
And then we can also point to some other kinds of movement. And we can highlight circulatory movements, so bringing fresh blood, which means fresh oxygen and nutrients to the brain. And so these are going to be ones that might be really familiar to you, like ginkgo. Okay? Tulsi also helps in this category all by itself. But you’re probably familiar with ginkgo. You are probably familiar with peppermint’s actions in this regard. Spearmint also can do this. And so, even mugwort is one that I really like, damiana here as well, even ginger. All of the herbs that are getting circulation moving are really going to be helpful here. But we can kind of put ginkgo at the top of the list because it is a very upward kind of circulatory. Oh, rosemary can go on this list as well, also a very up kind of movement. So, what does all this mean? You don’t have to work with every single one of those herbs that I just said. In fact, we started this saying tulsi for everyone. You can just go with tulsi and stop there if you want to. Because after all, if you’re overwhelmed, and you have too much to process, then you probably don’t want to sit and think about all this other stuff, right? You don’t actually have to. Just get tulsi, take a lot of it. But if you happen to have some ground ivy. If you happen to have some elderflower. If you have some ginkgo, or rosemary, or some mint that you enjoy, some mugwort even, go for it. You don’t have to take them all at the same time. You can take them throughout the day. And I have been taking the tulsi as capsules. I also have an elixir right now of blue vervain, tulsi, sage, and there’s a little rose in there too that I’ve been taking sort of situationally, especially when I feel like I’m getting very tense about things that I can’t control. And really, the blue vervain is the biggest part of that formula. But it does have tulsi in it, so I figure it’s worth mentioning.

Katja (36:07):
So, I take that when I’m feeling a certain kind of stress that is a very typical kind of stress for me to have. And then I really enjoy mugwort in tea. Mugwort and I’ll often put ginkgo in it, and then some juniper, and maybe some self-heal, and maybe some pine and orange peel, maybe a little hawthorn. So, we’ve got a lot of actions going on there. But in particular, we have a flavor that turns out kind of in the same direction as the flavor of gin. You know what I mean? There’s no alcohol in it but the sort of botanical flavor and then especially with the juniper in there. You don’t need very much juniper to get that flavor. And then the movement of fluids and the sort of stabilizing action of mugwort. Mugwort could have its own whole podcast actually just on this regard. Maybe that should be the next one: mugwort for everyone. But mugwort especially really helps to balance out that sort of emotional irrational response when you’re starting to panic about things with your measured rational response that says now, hold on. Hold on, let’s break this down and think about it rationally. And so if your emotions tend to run away with you when you’re feeling overwhelmed. And you need somebody to be like hold on, hold on. We can think about this. We can come up with an answer. Mugwort is real good at that.

More in the Stress Management Course

Katja (37:52):
Okay, so wow, I actually just listed a kabillion herbs, but hopefully it gets you thinking a little bit about how you could say tulsi for everyone. And then also say plus some friends to go along with it that are going to be exactly what I need to help balance everything out, right? Okay, now I talked about tulsi and the hippocampus, and if you want more information about that, about the ways, the science behind how tulsi is stimulating that action in the brain, then you can find that. You can go to Google Scholar and search for it, or you can grab our all-new Stress Management course. It’s one of our accessible courses, like our low-cost courses. It’s $25 for a whole – I don’t know – I think it’s 15 hours of video. It’s lots of really good stuff all specifically around how to deal with stress and overwhelm. And it has a whole chapter of I’m too overwhelmed to think about anything. Just give me an answer right now. And so it just asks you a question: do you feel like this? Here’s your answer. Do you feel like that? Here’s your answer. Because sometimes we feel like that. And it’s like no, I’m not going to study right now. I’m not going to learn something right now. I just need something that will help me. So, don’t worry, it’s got that right up at the top of the course. But it has so much information about how to manage stress, how stress happens in different ways, how overwhelm happens in your brain, and all the different strategies that you can take to wind that back. And it also explains how tulsi does this thing that it does in the hippocampus.

Katja (39:48):
Also some of that information around ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is another one that can have similar types of action around processing emotions, experiences, thoughts, et cetera, data. Yes, okay. So, it’s got all that for you. It’s got so much more. And you can find it at online.commonwealthherbs.com. And it’s the Stress Management course. All right. Whew. That was a little bit of a whirlwind. I kind of feel like I was talking fast, which might not really be abnormal at all. But I guess that’s appropriate for a discussion about information processing, and overwhelm, and overload. I hope that you can find a quiet moment in this day that feels good for you, just something that is nice and comforting. And this is the part of the podcast where Ryn would say take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And take a bunch of tulsi. Yay. So, I will see you again soon. I with Ryn will see you again soon. We have been splitting up for the podcast because we realize that we are not making enough podcast episodes for you. But we have a new campaign starting next week where we really are going to try to make one every week. No promises, but we’re going to try for you. And hopefully we will be together for some of them for you too. At any rate, I will see you soon with lots more fun, herby goodness. And until then, bye-bye.