Podcast 291: Mucus Is Good, Actually (or, The Healing Power of Snot)

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Show notes:

First, here’s that 40% off Winter Health Bundle we mentioned!

People have been emailing us lately to ask what herbs will get rid of all mucus in their bodies, and each time we get that kind of email, we feel surprised – because mucus is actually a really important feature in your body! It’s tempting to just write back, “oh, mucus is good, actually”, but that doesn’t really do it justice.

Mucus is part of your immune system, and provides essential lubrication in places where organs would otherwise have friction every time you move. In other words, mucous is not a disease – it protects you from disease. Excess mucus production can be an indicator of a problem, but it’s part of your body responding to the problem and working to solve it. It’s not a problem in and of itself.

It’s so important for herbalists to understand anatomy and physiology – so that you know what your body is doing and how to help it.

So this episode explains:

• what mucus is,
• how mucus is created,
• what functions mucus serves in the body,
• how to support your body when your mucus is too thick, too thin, too much, or showing up in places you don’t need it

You can find the Winter Health Bundle, which gives you BOTH Immune Health AND Respiratory Health for 40% off, here:

Our brand-new Winter Health bundle is the best way to go deeper in this material – and there’s a lot further to go. (This episode is only an introduction to one facet of immunity and herbalism!) The bundle includes our Immune Health and Respiratory Health courses, and you get them at 40% off their standard pricing, a savings of $260.

Like everything we offer, these are self-paced online video courses. They come with lifetime access to current & future course material, the 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!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Epsode Transcript

Katja (00:00:02):
Hi, I’m Katja.

Ryn (00:00:03):
And I’m Ryn.

Katja (00:00:04):
And we’re here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ryn (00:00:08):
And on the internet everywhere, thanks to the power of the podcasts and the rest of the internet. They work together.

Katja (00:00:15):
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryn (00:00:17):
Mucus.

Katja (00:00:18):
Mucus. Today we are talking about mucus.

Ryn (00:00:21):
You’re thrilled.

Katja (00:00:23):
It’s such a glamorous topic.

Ryn (00:00:25):
If you’re not thrilled yet, just wait.

Katja (00:00:26):
You’re going to be.

Ryn (00:00:27):
You will be.

Katja (00:00:28):
Mucus is good, actually. So recently we have been getting a lot of emails about mucus.

Ryn (00:00:37):
Yeah, no, we just decided that it was really important for us to tell you today, October 28th is mucus day.

Katja (00:00:45):
National Mucus Day.

Ryn (00:00:47):
No, this was spurred. This became necessary.

Katja (00:00:50):
This became necessary. So we’ve been getting all these emails, and they’re all really similar. So here’s one. Do you… It actually doesn’t say do you, it just says do have. But do you have something to deal with mucus in the body? I want to get rid of all mucus in the body. Let me know and the cost. We just kept getting these emails that were basically like this, just like please tell me how to get all the mucus out of my body. So finally I was like why are people sending these emails? I need to find out why. So I found an enormous corner of social media where people are selling products that will guarantee to get rid of all mucus in the body and post, after post, after post declaring that mucus is a disease, and you must rid yourself of mucus.

Ryn (00:01:44):
In fact, sometimes apparently mucus is the disease.

Katja (00:01:47):
Right. There’s one account that’s talking about mucus is the only disease. The only disease. Y’all, mucus is critically important to your survival. It is good. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Ryn (00:02:03):
That’s today’s episode. Yep. All right. But first we’re going to do our reclaimer, and then we’re going to dive in. What is mucus doing for you? Where do people get this idea that it’s bad? How do you keep your mucus healthy, noble, and not annoying, and more?

Katja (00:02:19):
Right. Because I mean, it does get annoying. I mean, that’s part of what makes this so funny is that mucus is not only not glamorous, usually when we are interacting with mucus, it’s wicked annoying. It’s pretty uncomfortable. Yeah. So to just stand here and say mucus is good. Okay, that does sound kind of ridiculous, but it is good. We’re going to tell you.

Ryn (00:02:38):
Ridiculosity with a purpose. Okay. So we are not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators.

Katja (00:02:44):
The ideas discussed on this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So these discussions are indeed for educational purposes only for real.

Ryn (00:02:57):
We want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone or for everyone either. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So keep in mind, we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic, right way that everyone must adhere to. I guess if somebody wants to get rid of all their mucus, they’re welcome to try.

Katja (00:03:19):
Everybody’s body is different. So the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’re going to give you some new information to think about, some ideas to research and experiment with further. Yeah.

Ryn (00:03:31):
Everyone’s mucus is different, but everybody has some mucus. Okay. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. That doesn’t mean you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make.

Katja (00:03:54):
And I don’t have good wording for this part yet, but I want to emphasize that okay, it’s your choice to make. But that could be really stressful because you also need the information in order to make the choice. So when you’re working with your healthcare people in your life, ask a lot of questions, advocate for yourself, make sure that they explain things so that you can understand it so that you can make a good decision. I’ve got to come up with better words for that.

Ryn (00:04:20):
We’re workshopping it. Yeah. We’re going to get there.

Katja (00:04:23):
All right. So everything that we’re going to talk about today is covered in way more detail in the Immune Health course. So if you want more about mucus, which kind of feels like…-

Ryn (00:04:34):
You totally do.

Katja (00:04:35):
You totally do. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. Okay, but you do want more, and you can definitely have more. There’s a link in the show notes to get to the Immune Health course, and we’ll talk more about it at the very end.

Ryn (00:04:48):
And the very special winter bundle.

What Mucus Is Doing for You

Katja (00:04:49):
Yes, yes, yes. But let’s jump in with what mucus is doing for you, how you keep it healthy and not annoying, and where people are getting this idea that it’s bad. Does that actually have any underpinning in anything? Let’s investigate.

Ryn (00:05:06):
We’ve kind of been singing this song for a while. Because one of our favorite herbalists ever is Paul Bergner. And he’s written a bunch of books over his long and storied career, and several of them have really similar titles. There’s The Healing Power of Minerals and Trace Elements, and there’s The Healing Power of Ginseng and The Tonic Herbs. And there’s The Healing Power of Echinacea and Goldenseal. And that one’s really hard to find. And there was the other one too.

Katja (00:05:32):
I can’t remember.

Ryn (00:05:33):
The Healing Power of Garlic.

Katja (00:05:35):
How could I not remember that? Yeah.

Ryn (00:05:38):
And then Paul’s favorite thing every now and then was to talk about how he really needed another one to round out the cinquin trilogy, which would have been The Healing Power of Snot. For all the reasons we’re about to say here.

Katja (00:05:52):
Yeah. And if you really put it… I mean, listen, we’re talking about mucus, and that’s just nearly like talking about poop. This is just the least glamorous thing to be talking about. But if you start thinking about the healing power of snot, it’s going to help you really change your perspective with here.

Ryn (00:06:14):
Because it has jobs, it has functions, it has actions that you can’t pawn off to something else.

Katja (00:06:19):
Right? It’s like fingernails. You don’t actually want to live life without fingernails. Fingernails are awesome. They protect your fingertips. It’s very uncomfortable if you don’t have fingernails. Recently I cut my fingernails too short and let me tell you how super uncomfortable that is.

Ryn (00:06:36):
Very distressing.

Katja (00:06:37):
So think about mucus that way. All right. Okay. Enough examples. Let’s talk about what is mucus doing in your body? And again, we are acknowledging that sometimes mucus is wicked annoying, but we’re going to get to that. So if you didn’t have any mucus at all, what would happen to your body?

Ryn (00:06:59):
You’d have a bad time. You’d have several bad times all at once. You would be a superposition of bad times. Your eyes would get all dried out, and every time you blinked it would be like sandpaper scraping over them. Your stomach acid would eat through your stomach. You’d have to strain, and push, and scrape every time you went to go poop as if you were passing a kidney stone. And also every time you went to go pee, there would be burning, and pain, and discomfort, and the feeling of acid. And you’d also, by the way, catch every single cold, or flu, or COVID that one virion particle floated into your airstream.

Katja (00:07:37):
Or pneumonia, or anything, or E. coli.

Ryn (00:07:43):
This is not the list. This is like one small part of a big, long scroll that goes on for a while. It would be a bad time. You got to have that mucus, man.

Katja (00:07:52):
So why would all those things happen? Because mucus is a seal. It’s a lining. And in German the common word, not the science word but the common word for mucus is slime covering or slime skin. That is literally what mucus is. The inside of your body is lined with skin cells, right? When you hear the word skin, you are thinking the skin outside your body. But the inside of your body, all your organs, like your tubes, your sacs, all that stuff, they’re lined with skin cells, and it is the exact same kind of cell that’s on the outside.

Ryn (00:08:29):
Category.

Katja (00:08:31):
Yeah. That’s hard to visualize if we’re talking about the inside of your blood vessels. But if you just take your lip and pull it down like your five, like this, right? Okay. And you look at the skin on the inside of your lip, or the inside of your cheek, or whatever, it’s clearly skin, right? It has a slime coat, but it’s clearly skin.

Ryn (00:08:52):
Skin with special powers.

Katja (00:08:55):
So that slime coat that you see on the inside of your cheeks and your lips, that’s not just saliva. That is mucus. That is your protective lining. It is your lubrication lining. If you didn’t have it, every time you chew there would be friction between your gums and your cheeks, and it would hurt so much. You need that lubrication. If you didn’t have that lubrication lining, that slime covering on all of this protective skin on the inside of your organs, your entire body would be like sandpaper all of the time. Every time you moved, every time you breathed, every time things happened that you don’t even know happened like peristalsis, it would be like sandpaper happening inside your body. So you can think about when you’re sick, and the inside of your nose gets really raw and dry, and it feels cracked and burning. It feels like there’s a million little cuts inside your nose. That is how your whole body would feel if you didn’t have this protective lining, right?

Ryn (00:10:09):
Yeah. So all of these inside parts, the insides of the GI tract from the mouth all the way to the other end. The linings of the bladder and really the whole urinary tract as well from the kidney through the tubes, to the bladder, and through the other tube all the way out. Your sinuses, your lungs, your eyes, your ears, all of your tubes and sacs all throughout your body have this protective lining of the endothelial cells. And lots of those protective linings have this protective secretion of mucus. We call these tissues mucous membranes. They have the endothelial cells. They have these specialized cells as well called goblet cells that really produce the slime portion of things. And that slime itself on a chemical level –

Katja (00:11:00):
It’s kind of the opposite of a goblet actually, right? Because instead of pouring stuff in, we’re pouring stuff out.

The Gel Matrix as a First-Line Defense

Ryn (00:11:06):
Absolutely. It’s magical goblets everywhere, yeah. So on a chemical level, mucus is mucopolysaccharides, right? They’re chemically similar to the mucilage that you get if you take marshmallow root or slippery elm, and you soak it in water for a long time, and the water gets viscous, and thick, and snotty, right? You secrete that same kind of stuff. Your body takes carbohydrates basically and collects them together into these long complex chains that can hold water in a hydrocolloid formation. Which basically means that the water is not going to float away, or run away, or stream away. It’s going to be held, and it’s going to be a soothing, coating, lubricating kind of a shield, kind of a protection.

Katja (00:11:58):
Like a gel matrix.

Ryn (00:11:59):
Like a gel matrix.

Katja (00:12:01):
I feel like gel matrix is something that you would see on marketing materials for a shoe insert padding or anything that’s supposed to be cushiony. And it’s weird because the word mucus is on one hand so familiar because we all have to blow our noses, but on the other hand so foreign. But a word like gel matrix, because of its presence in the marketing world, we’re all like no, I kind of know what that means. It’s like gel that stays in place. And that’s what’s going on here. Now we’re going to come back to those polysaccharides. But because you just said it, and it came off in my mind, so I want to remember to say this again when we come back to it. This is just one of 10 million examples about why herbs are supportive in the body, right? So much of the time it’s because they are making molecules that are the same or almost the same as the kind of molecules that we make. Often those molecules are for the same purpose, not always but often. And so when maybe we don’t have enough of those molecules in the case of this polysaccharidal gel matrix that we’re talking about in this mucus lining, we can add some in. And so supplemental gel matrix for your protective linings. So I like how just thinking about herbs are not magic. They’re not like whatever. I mean, it’s kind of magic that like wow, we live in this environment where everything is connected, and things help each other. That is magic, and it’s worth protecting. It’s worth protecting the helping each other part, and it’s worth protecting the environment too. But it’s not just like oh, magically, they just magically work. No, no, no. It’s because look, the plants are solving problems, the same kinds of problems that we have to solve. And they’re creating these molecules that solve those problems. And those same molecules can be helpful for us too. Okay. Anyway, that was my little interjection.

Ryn (00:14:13):
Yeah. So we get this gel, we get this lubrication, but there’s more than that actually going on here, right? The mucous membranes are not only goblet cells and then those endothelium. There’s also immune cells that have an outward facing side that is on the exterior or on the outward face of that mucous membrane. And they’re doing things like observing what comes along, and sampling it, and saying is this a pathogen? Is this a problem? Do I need to mount an inflammatory response? Do I need to amp up an immune reaction to what I’m encountering here? They’re also secreting defense mechanisms like antibodies. And all of those are there in the mucous membrane, in the mucus itself. They’re getting secreted, they’re getting dispersed, they’re in the snot, they’re in the phlegm, they’re in the slime. They’re there to help you. So this is a first line defense as far as your immune system goes. You can think of the immune system as a series of shells, or a series of layers to the onion, or defense lines in the castle, or whatever you want. They all matter. They’re all important. But it’s common to neglect the outermost ones, which is really where the first contact happens. And if you can stop a problem there, well, nobody else needs to get activated and involved, and we can devote our resources to other fun stuff.

Katja (00:15:34):
It’s like the moat.

Ryn (00:15:35):
Yeah.

Katja (00:15:36):
If they don’t even get past the moat, then okay, we don’t have to worry about it.

Ryn (00:15:40):
Yes. And the moat has alligators in it.

Katja (00:15:42):
And the moat has alligators.

Ryn (00:15:43):
Very good.

Katja (00:15:44):
Okay. Also, as you were describing it, I was thinking it’s like Neosporin. I can’t believe I’m making this example, but here we go. If you have a friend who’s really mainstream or something, then this example might help. Imagine all of your mucus is actually Neosporin, right? People are familiar with Neosporin because they go to the drugstore, and they see it, and whatever. And it’s like a slimy ointment that you put on that has antibacterial action. Okay. Well, imagine your body can make that all by itself. And not only can it, it does, and it lines your nose, and your eyes, and your ears, and your throat, and your intestines. It lines all the parts of your body with this Neosporin, basically. It’s basically what’s happening here, except Neosporin is made out of petroleum and pharmaceuticals. And hey, listen, sometimes a pharmaceutical is necessary. We’re not knocking all pharmaceuticals just because they are pharmaceuticals. But in this case we can make our own antibacterial slime right there in our own noses.

Ryn (00:16:52):
Yeah. So they’re there. It’s there to protect you, right? Some pathogens, some particulate is coming in. You want that defense. You want that outermost shield to stop things or kill them off even before they get into you.

Katja (00:17:05):
And sometimes it’s not even about killing. Sometimes it’s about there’s a ton of particle matter in the air. It’s dust, it’s smoke, it’s pollen, it’s whatever. Pollen gets a little asterisk because sometimes the immune system gets involved, okay. But sometimes you just get your nose full of gunk because there’s so much dust in the air, and the mucus is trapping that before you breathe it in. Okay, now we’ve got to do something about it. It’s trapping it. Great, it’s not going into your lungs, but we still have to get it out of your body. Okay.

Ryn (00:17:38):
Yeah. And you’re able to detect that that’s happening and to then produce some more mucus, right? So it’s not just there on a thin layer and turning to mud inside of your nose if it’s really dusty. No. So then your nose runs. And now it gets slimy, and it’s kind of annoying. And it’s coming out of your nose and out of your eyes. And it’s happening in your ears as well because yeah, ear wax is mucus that’s condensed and dried up a little bit and okay, whatever.

Katja (00:18:06):
Filled with dust particles and yeah.

Ryn (00:18:08):
Right. So the mucus is trapping these things before they can get in, but now the mucus is actually changing. It’s getting thick, and it’s getting gooey because it’s trapping all of this stuff. And/or it’s getting more runny or thinner because your body is opening up the mucous membrane and saying throw more fluid through there and get that stuff out, wash that stuff away. So different things happen to the consistency of the mucus that you experience there and a lot of them are uncomfortable.

Katja (00:18:38):
But on the other hand, you get a big slimy, dusty, snot crud in your face, and then your mucus thins out and gets very watery to wash all that out. And you’re sniffling, and looking for a handkerchief and all that stuff, and it’s gross. But it’s also kind of amazing that your body can change the thickness of this homemade Neosporin. Let’s not call it that. So that first it’s thick enough to trap things, and then it’s thin enough to wash it away. It’s actually kind of amazing. It’s actually amazing.

Ryn (00:19:24):
It’s amazing, and it’s annoying when it’s happening in your face, right? You’re like this sucks. I don’t want to deal with this anymore. Let’s get out of this. So okay, it’s annoying. And as we get sick or if we’re exposed to dust, and pollen, and wildfire smoke, and all of that stuff for a while, then it kind of gets exhausting to keep up with what’s happening with all the crud in your nose, with whatever’s coming up and getting coughed out of your lungs, all that kind of stuff. And what happens as a result of that experience is that when you think about being sick, you think about the snot. You think about the phlegm. You think about the gunk. And you’re like that is the problem. And so this is us expressing sympathy for the people who are seeing the stuff on TikTok and being like yeah, mucus is the problem.

Katja (00:20:11):
Mucus is the problem.

Ryn (00:20:12):
We’ve just got to get rid of this stuff.

Supporting Mucus in the Respiratory, Urinary, & Digestive Tracts

Katja (00:20:13):
Yeah. Because when we are sick, we think that snot is the symptom when actually snot is the solution, right? It’s the healing power of snot. That’s where we are right now. So we see the snot as the problem. I have to go and get the Mucinex. I have to go and do something to get rid of it. But actually the snot, the mucus is your body responding to the problem. The mucus is not the problem. It is your body’s response to the problem. So when we’re seeing a lot of mucus, instead of trying to get rid of the mucus, although please do blow your nose. But instead of stopping the body from making mucus, what we want to do instead is support whatever the mucus is responding to, support the body in its response to whatever that pathogen, or particulate, or whatever is.

Ryn (00:21:09):
Right. And it’s kind of easiest to discuss this in the respiratory context because we’ve all dealt with that and felt it very directly. But this is happening wherever there is some mucus. If it’s in the eyes, if you’re getting that kind of like oozing crust. And then you go to sleep, and then you wake up, and it’s all kind of there. And you have to wash it away with cold water and clean it up.

Katja (00:21:28):
Your eyelashes are kind of glued together.

Ryn (00:21:29):
Yeah, whatever. Or if it’s in the urinary tract or wherever this happens, it is a response. It is an indicator that there’s a problem. It’s not a problem unto itself with no other cause, no other connection, or nothing else that we can do about it. So there’s a bunch of things we can do about it. A lot of times the excess mucus production is due to a pathogen. Your body is saying there’s an infection here. I got to deal with it. Mucus is one of the ways I accomplished that. Okay, here we go. And so if this was happening in the urinary system, like there’s a UTI infection going on, and there’s a bunch of white, mucusy, phlegmy exudate production that’s accumulating and being expressed. Okay, great. So here we can think of herbs that are going to metaphorically cut through that. So yarrow is really handy there. Juniper berry is really effective for that. Or your old favorite uva-ursi. I’ve got a UTI, I take uva-ursi. Okay, fine. Yeah, it will help, and it will combat the infection and make it so your body doesn’t need to produce all of that mucus anymore.

Katja (00:22:38):
And obviously, okay, that was like a super, super quickie overview because this could be more complicated, and the infection could be too big. And it could be in your kidneys, and now we really have a problem. Or it could be whatever. Okay, this could be more complicated. But in terms of as an example of here’s some mucus that isn’t in your nose, right?

Ryn (00:22:59):
Yeah. And meanwhile, these are all drying and astringent urinary tract-affinity, antimicrobial herbs. All of those words all lined up to match the pattern that I was describing at the beginning where we have the UTI with a bunch of excess mucus production. Because sometimes people get a UTI, and it’s just really dry. And if you could see it red and irritated. And that would not be the time for yarrow, or juniper, or even uva-ursi unless you’ve got some other friends along to cool, and to moisten, and to lubricate those tissues in the appropriate way.

Katja (00:23:34):
Right, right, right. We’re always thinking energetically. We’re not just saying oh, if there’s mucus and a urinary tract infection, then obviously it’s juniper every time. That’s not how herbs work. We don’t have herbs for whatever. We are still looking energetically at the problem and choosing our herbs that will match up with the symptoms and the experience that the person is having and not the name of what it is. Because you can have a UTI with a whole different host of symptoms, and then you would choose different herbs for it. Okay. So that’s enough disclaimers on it. Y’all got it. But we could think about this in the respiratory tract as well. In the same kind of way, if we’re having lots of gunk, lots of mucus production in the lungs. Instead of trying to turn off the mucus, we could say oh, there’s a pathogen that I am trying to respond to in my respiratory tract. I’m going to do a thyme steam, or an oregano steam, or a sage steam, or whatever you happen to have. And that thyme steam – yes, it is true – the heat of the water, the water of the water, or the heat of the steam, the water of the steam, and the heat of the herb altogether are going to thin the mucus in your respiratory tract so that it’s easier to cough out. That is true. But they’re also providing direct, topical, antimicrobial action. Topical because you are inhaling it into the respiratory tract, and it is physically coming into contact with the pathogens that are in the lungs, on the lining of the interior of the lungs.

(00:25:17):
So again, yes, part of the impact of a thyme steam or whichever herb you’re working with in your steam is going to be to thin the mucus to make it easier to cough out. But that isn’t because we’re trying to get rid of the mucus, that is because we are trying to get rid of the stuff that the mucus has accumulated, to get all that used up mucus out to try to help the body fight the pathogen. Ultimately, you’re going to get better, you’re not going to be sick anymore. You’re going to build a new… You’re constantly replacing that mucous membrane so that it is constantly protecting your endothelial lining from all the pathogens and everything else that are trying to get in.

Ryn (00:26:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, other things we could do that might help here would be to lubricate that particular tissue. And so let’s take an example in the stomach, right? Let’s say we’ve got heartburn, and there’s a stomach ulcer going on. So that’s really an esophagus and stomach problem together. All right, fine. In that situation, if we were to work with marshmallow, one of the benefits we would be getting there is that the marshmallow as an infusion… It’s not going to help as a tincture here, right? We prepare it as an infusion in water. We get that increased viscosity, that velvety smooth sensation with the fluid as we drink it. Maybe it even goes so far as to be a little bit slimy when you drink it and swallow it down. And that is going to coat and cover the esophagus, which is kind of irritated and inflamed, kind of raw. It’s going to coat ensue there. It’s going to get into the stomach. It’s going to coat and protect that open wound of the ulcer. And it’s going to do that in a way that’s really similar to what your stomach naturally does, right? An ulcer is a place where your body’s natural capacity to produce a protective layer of mucus has failed in that localized area. And now there’s a wound.

Katja (00:27:12):
Kind of like the hole in the ozone over Australia.

Ryn (00:27:14):
Kind of like that.

Katja (00:27:15):
Yeah?

Ryn (00:27:16):
Yeah. And so now the stomach acid is causing damage to the organ that produces the stomach acid because one of its other functions, one of its other mechanisms of self-defense there has broken down. But you take in the marshmallow root infusion, and it soothes, and it coats, and it protects. And then incidentally it also accelerates the healing process of that wound and gets things back to where they should be.

Katja (00:27:40):
Yeah. We might also think about supporting the mucus helping the body respond in terms of promoting expectoration or another mechanism of eliminating the excess, right? So in the lungs, that is going to be expectorating the phlegm, coughing it out, and that might be elecampane. It might be mullein. These are herbs… It could also be something like ginger. These are herbs that are helping to create a productive cough so that you’re not just hacking away for no reason. Coughing is exertion, it’s hard. And if you’re not going to cough something out, then you don’t need to be coughing. That’s just wasting energy. And when you’re sick, okay, well that’s particularly not great. But if we can help peel that stuff off the side of the lungs, thin it out, break it up, do different mechanisms of action here, then it will be easier to actually have a productive cough. The entire point of a cough is to spit stuff out. So that could be one way of supporting the response, supporting the mucous membrane in responding to what’s going on.

Ryn (00:29:04):
I like that you brought up ginger here though. Because one of the ways your body normally copes with some of the mucus you produce in the respiratory system and in the lungs is the cilia – the tiny little hair-like things – are going to move that up, and then it’s going to get swallowed down. It’s going to go into the stomach, and it’s going to get basically digested, and processed, and eliminated down that way eventually. And so there can be some cases where a person’s digestive fire is failing to keep up with the mucus that they produce, even if it’s not at the level of a big rattling phlegm that I have to cough up everywhere, right? If their stomach isn’t working well, if their other digestive organs aren’t capable of doing their normal jobs. Then that person could get a feeling of being sluggish, being heavy, being bogged down, being stagnant with a lot of excess fluid in the system. And working with a digestive stimulant like ginger or even in certain cases working with bitters, that might help your body to keep up with your normal baseline level of processing for the mucus you’ve got.

Katja (00:30:13):
Right. That little cilia action, just on a regular Tuesday, you don’t necessarily need to be coughing up the regular, small amount of turnover of mucus that you have going on because you’re not getting inundated with wildfire smoke today. You’re not getting inundated with pathogens. You just have like oh, a little speck of particulate, a little bit of this. Well, your mucous membrane is still protecting you from that, but it’s not tons. So you’re just going to kind of get it up and then swallow it down because that’s just easier than coughing all of the time. But right, if you can’t keep up with digesting that stuff, then that’s going to be super uncomfortable.

Ryn (00:30:59):
Yeah. And that would be the same person where if they were to consume a nice, big mug full of slimacious marshmallow or elm infusion, then for them it wouldn’t really feel pleasant. It would feel heavy, and they would feel like a frog who was oozing out of itself. I don’t know.

Katja (00:31:21):
Bloaty.

Ryn (00:31:23):
Absolutely.

Katja (00:31:24):
Bloaty, but high bloating. Bloaty in the stomach, not bloaty in the intestines.

Ryn (00:31:30):
Yeah. Heavy and gross. And so if somebody reported that response to you when they drank the marshmallow infusion, you’d be like wow, we’ve got to warm up your digestive fire. Let’s go. Yeah.

When It’s Too Runny in the Sinuses

Katja (00:31:41):
Speaking of fire, let’s think about eliminating excess mucus in the sinuses. And again, this isn’t help me get rid of all my mucus. This is you have mucus that is in your sinuses that has gotten ahead of what your body can process. So it’s got too much particulate or too much debris after killing off pathogens or whatever. It’s gotten goopy, it’s gotten pasty, and it’s kind of stuck up in there, and we need to help it drain down. So your body is trying to make a lot of watery stuff to wash it out. But it just gooped up too fast, and now you can’t quite move it. So this is a great time for fire cider. Fire cider is not like… We should do a whole episode just on fire cider because everybody is drinking their fire cider every day. And that’s totally cool if you love fire cider, and if it feels good in your stomach. But for some people fire cider is too hot to have all the time. But this would be the perfect time to have it because that heat from the vinegar, the heat from the peppers, and onions, and whatever else, horseradish, whatever you like to put in your fire cider is going to get right up into the sinuses and drain them out really fast. You could do that with enchiladas too if you just put a lot of cayenne pepper in.

Ryn (00:33:04):
Big bite of wasabi.

Katja (00:33:05):
Yep, that’ll do it also. Yeah. But if fire cider is not your style. Or if you’re like no, I cannot handle that much heat. Ground ivy is another plant that can really help with this, to help thin that stuff out and drain it down. Yeah.

Ryn (00:33:21):
All right. So these are ways that we can help the body to cope with the phlegm, the mucus that we’ve got going on. We can also help the body to keep the mucus linings healthy, to keep them kind of in a Goldilocks zone so that what they’re producing isn’t too thick and stuck. It’s not too thin, and watery, and drippy. Because if you have a runny nose, and it’s really just like water coming straight through, and you’re going through tissue after tissue, it’s not helping you at that point. It’s not actually protecting you. It’s not capturing things. It’s not serving as a delivery mechanism for antibodies and other stuff. It’s just not helping very much. And it’s also irritating. And now your nose is turning red, and you’re getting dryness here, and it’s no fun at all.

Katja (00:34:11):
It’s no fun.

Ryn (00:34:12):
Yeah. So when that happens, again, you don’t want to stop it entirely. You want to change the consistency. You want to thicken it up a little bit. The way we accomplish that herbally is with astringents.

Katja (00:34:26):
This is like okay, we can go back to our Neosporin example, even though it’s a terrible example.

Ryn (00:34:31):
You said we weren’t going back to that.

Katja (00:34:32):
I know, but we are. So if you think about Neosporin, it has a consistency, right? It’s not hard like chapstick. It is soft and kind of goopy, but it’s not watery either. It’s right in the middle. That soft and goopy, easy to spread, not too hard, not too soft consistency. Okay. Think about that’s what we want the mucus to be as well. We want that middle ground, that not too dry, not too drippy consistency. So that it is uniformly spread over the whole area that it’s trying to protect and neither dripping down nor glomming, like pasting. We don’t want a barrier that’s too dry either. So if you’re thinking about how do I keep that Goldilocks consistency, that perfect, spreadable, nice, medium-soft consistency? If it is too drippy, and because you’re an herbalist probably listening to this, if you were making salve or an ointment, and you’re like oh, my salve is too liquidy, you would put in more beeswax, right? So that is thickening something up. And if it’s too thick, you would put in more oil to thin it down just a little bit. Well, if we’re going to do this for the mucous membranes, the thickening it up is astringents because it’s tightening the cells in the… I keep pointing to my nose because actually today my nose is really drippy. Perfect day to be making this podcast. As I’m talking, I’m also thinking don’t let your nose drip, which is ridiculous. So that’s why I keep pointing at my nose. So we want to tighten it just enough, not over tighten it, just tighten it just enough so that you don’t feel like you have that constant dripping, but so that stuff is just like the Goldilocks consistency. That might be an herb like sage. It might be an herb like yerba santa. It might be goldenseal. I’m putting asterisks and exclamation points around that because you don’t need very much goldenseal. One or two drops and that is going to be enough. It’s so astringent that that’s going to be enough to tighten up those mucous membranes. If you take a ton, it might be really uncomfortable.

Ryn (00:37:09):
Yeah, you can overshoot the mark. It’s relatively quick acting, so you can take two drops, five drops, whatever. You can wait 10, 15 minutes and be like yep, still too watery. Take another little squirt, you’re going to be okay. But at some point you’ll realize oh yeah, things have really changed in my nose here, and I don’t need to keep on going with the goldenseal past that point. That is its special power amongst the berberine containing plants is that goldenseal, probably because of the hydrastine content or other reasons, it’s just way more of an astringent onto your mucous membranes than a real close relative like barberry, for instance.

Katja (00:37:49):
But if you get into… Back in the 80s and 90s, and I don’t know, some people are probably still doing it, it was really popular to do an echinacea-goldenseal tincture whenever you felt like you had a cold or flu coming on. Because the mythology was oh, that’ll make it so that you don’t catch whatever it is. But high doses of goldenseal is going to overtighten your mucous membrane and actually make you more susceptible to whatever kind of pathogen. Because your mucous membrane is going to start to dry out, and you’re no longer going to be able to fight it with that kind of Goldilocks consistency. And plus golden seal is also endangered. So if we’re going to work with goldenseal, we should be working with very small doses to be responsible about working with the plant. And also we should be working with very small doses because that is the appropriate way to work with it in the body, and high doses will over tighten, and yes. Okay.

Ryn (00:38:49):
And so these are herbs where, like the ones we talked here – the sage, yerba santa, goldenseal – they have this shared quality of you can take them by mouth, and you can get these effects in the sinuses, and in the lungs, and other mucous membranes in your body. You could also, of course, do a neti pot thing or a nasal spray preparation with these and get the direct contact. That’ll be faster acting even more.

Katja (00:39:11):
Oh, I just can’t get behind a neti pot.

Ryn (00:39:15):
Some people love them.

Katja (00:39:16):
Some people love them.

Ryn (00:39:17):
We’ve never really enjoyed them. But if you like it, you like it. Go ahead.

Katja (00:39:21):
Right. If you like it, you like it. But if you don’t currently employ one, I would say don’t start because you can, again, you can overshoot. Just putting tons of water in your nose, that’s not really how your nose is supposed to work. And you can actually kind of have impact damage. Just like if you’re swimming, and you accidentally suck a bunch of water up your nose, it makes the mucous membranes of your nose quite raw. And it’s a sharp kind of discomfort. So that’s what we’re watching out for with a neti pot is we don’t want to create that kind of a situation either. So if you already use one, and you love it. And you already avoid that, you already are watching that line, cool. But I’m a big fan of sprays instead because it’s a lot harder to hurt your nose with a rush of water when it’s just a rush of a fine mist. And then also the fine mist is not going to rush away as much. It’s going to sort of stick in the area a little bit more. So if you can get one of those nose misters. And if you can’t, just any fine-mist spray bottle, spray it onto the upper lip underneath your nose and inhale while you do it, it still works. So if you do not have one of those specialized little bottles for nasal inhalation, you can totally DIY it by just spraying basically at the top of your mouth. It will work.

When It’s Too Thick in the Sinuses

Ryn (00:40:51):
Yeah. All right. So that’s one polarity. The other polarity would be that the mucus is not too thin. It’s way too thick. It’s gooey. It’s paste-like. And so again, we’re not going to try to get rid of all of it. But we are going to thin it out a little bit or loosen it anyway so that we can get that cruddy, gunky stuff out of the way, and we can have a more healthy, proper kind of lining underneath that. If it’s really thick like that, the thing we actually want to do in this case is bring in some more moisture to loosen it up and thin it out a touch. The work ends up being done by demulcent herbs. That can be the marshmallow, that can be elm again. Okra is actually really effective for this. Okra water is a folk tradition preparation that a lot of people are already familiar with to some extent. This is a great application for that kind of thing.

Katja (00:41:42):
Sassafras leaf is my favorite in this category because it’s not… If you’re a person who already carries a lot of water. And you’re like oh, I just don’t want more thickness and dampness in my body. Sassafras I find is a real Goldilocks amount of moistening where it will moisten, but it won’t make you feel too heavy with the water.

Ryn (00:42:08):
Yeah. I mean, even a light demulcent like linden can be helpful for this kind of a problem. And these we’re all talking about water preparations, tea infusions of one kind or another, cold or long or both. But something like that in order to get that mucilage to come out, you can drink that in. It can have these effects that we’re aiming at.

Katja (00:42:30):
Look, and this is the same way that your body is handling the problem, right? Your body would normally when stuff gets really thick, your body would thin out the mucus, the next level of mucus that it’s producing to try to wash it out. And so when we are taking a bunch of demulcents, we’re actually replicating what the body would be doing anyway. When we think about herbalism, so often we think about it in terms of what we all grew up with with conventional medicine. Like I’m taking a pill to fix this problem, or I’m taking this herb to fix this problem. But it isn’t that it is fixing the problem of mucus. It is like oh, I’m grabbing the herb that does the same thing that my body would already be trying to do, so that I can help my body do the thing that it’s already trying to do. But just do it with less energy expenditure, or do it more easily, or bring in more resources to help my body do that. So thinking about your herbal approaches, especially when we’re talking about acute situations like this. Trying to bring in an herbal approach that mimics what your body would already be doing, that is like the pinnacle of support. And that’s like your body’s already trying to respond. And we’re not trying to override that response, we’re trying to assist that response.

Ryn (00:44:02):
Yeah, absolutely. I want to make a special note here about mullein, because mullein is an herb that has some internet fame. Mullein is out there promoted as the lung herb for all lung problems. And oh, come on. And I know that there are folks out there saying that one of the ways mullein is going to save your life is that it’s going to eliminate all of that mucus for you. But in fact, I think mullein is more about producing mucus than about eliminating it. In a case where somebody has a ton of excess phlegm in their lungs, I’m not going to think about mullein by itself. Maybe if it’s all dried and stuck on to the lungs, it’s a dry, phlegmy kind of a situation, mullein can be helpful because it directs moisture towards that mucous membrane. Because it helps your body to produce that more fluid type of excretion that loosens what’s already stuck on there and helps you to get it up and out. But in those cases it might make more sense to have mullein combined with a little bit of a stimulant expectorant, right? Mullein is going to change the conditions. The garlic, or the horseradish, or whatever is going to help you get that good strong cough and get it all the way up and out.

Katja (00:45:17):
If you are giving mullein to a very dry person, then combining mullein with a demulcent is a good idea. People will talk about mullein as a demulcent because that’s how it was categorized back in whenever the olden times were. For me, that’s the 80s and 90s, but whatever it was.

Ryn (00:45:37):
Choose your own olden times.

Katja (00:45:38):
Yeah, choose your own olden times. But just make some mullein tea. It is not demulcent. It is not slimy. If you take some sassafras, or some linden, or whatever, and then you compare that to the mullein, the mullein is not slimy. It is not bringing in its own moisture. Mullein is doing its work by redirecting moisture. And so in a body like mine where I hold on to moisture, I am prone in the edema direction, right? I’m already just prone to being puffy naturally and retaining water. For a body like mine, mullein is super comfortable. Because it is directing a bunch of extra fluid that I honestly could stand to get rid of to the lungs where I will… It is a pathway of elimination, right? You will exhale a bunch of fluid, micro drops of it, but still. And that extra moisture is going to help thin the mucus enough that you can cough it up. But if you are giving mullein to a person like Ryn who is really, really dry on a good day and on a bad day is really, really dry. Then when you’re giving that mullein, what moisture does Ryn have to redirect? Not a lot actually. So it’s a way better idea to give that mullein in combination with other fluids. If we’re giving mullein as tea, okay, well there’s water there already. But that’s probably water that he needs regardless. So if we’re going to put something with polysaccharides in there, if we’re putting mullein and sassafras, if we’re putting mullein and linden, mullein and marshmallow, mullein and whatever, then we’re bringing in some of that sticky fluid to help it get redirected towards the lungs to do the expectorating work.

Where People Got this Idea of Eliminating All Mucus

Ryn (00:47:43):
And so we’ve gone from eliminate the mucus to let’s get healthy mucus in the right places in proper amounts at the right time. Yeah. So a lot of extra layers of consideration come into play there. And so that kind of brings us back to where did people even get this idea that eliminate all mucus from my body was an achievable goal, a desirable goal, something to be striven for? Where does that come from?

Katja (00:48:15):
Okay listen, first, there are some concepts in traditional medicine that are easy to misunderstand in this direction. We’ll talk about those in a second, but before we do, we first have to say that the reality is that some people are very scammy. And if they can convince you that something you already have is bad for you, if something that you are continuously making is bad for you. And then they can sell you a product that will supposedly make that badness go away. Then they’re going to make a lot of money off of you if they can convince you of that. And that’s where we get these people on the internet saying that mucus is a disease. Because that helps them sell their product that will supposedly rid you of all mucus. And this is why there are legal guidelines. People say that herbalism is not regulated. Herbalism is regulated, but there’s not a lot of enforcement. There are legal guidelines that say that herbal product makers are not permitted to make any claims about what their product does or to teach what the herbs themselves can do. Very much like conventional medicine, there is a divide between the doctor and the pharmacist. The herbal legal guidelines have the same divide in this country. That there is a division between the people who are teaching and doing clinical work and the people who are making products. The reason for that divide, even though a lot of product makers think it’s wicked annoying, the reason for that divide is to try to cut back on scams. It’s the same reason that they make that divide for pharmaceuticals and doctors too, because scamminess is not limited to the herbal world. Pharmaceutical companies will try it if they can too. Anybody will try it. Listen, scamminess is a part of humanity. Not every human is scammy, but lots of…

Ryn (00:50:16):
You must find the scammy inside yourself.

Katja (00:50:20):
And get rid of it.

Ryn (00:50:21):
You must contain the scamminess within you.

Katja (00:50:23):
Right? There are scammy people. And when money is on the line, and they can convince you that something is broken in your body that isn’t really broken, and then they can sell you something for it, they’re going to do that. So that is true, that exists. And yes, that is one part of where this idea comes from. Because they are very vocal on social media, and they are out there selling things. And a lot of them have an unnatural number of followers, like so many followers. And they’re very convincing, like scammers are. Okay. Yes, there are scammers. That’s part of any industry. We don’t love it, but it’s real. But there are also some traditional concepts that could make people come to this conclusion that all mucus is bad.

Ryn (00:51:13):
Yeah. If you start from the place of here’s this experience that’s common, and everyone has shared, and is fairly frequent. And it’s uncomfortable, and it makes you want to get rid of it by whatever means are available to you.

Katja (00:51:27):
And it’s already associated with a sickness state because it only really happens if you’re sick and kind of miserable.

Ryn (00:51:33):
Yeah. So we have that. We have the kind of culture that most of us here grew up in where when you are sick in some way, you go to the drug store, you get a drug to take care of the problem. For the mucus specifically, you have products like Mucinex, and they’re like we’re going to get rid of the mucus for you. Okay, no problem. So that’s another element that’s in play here. And then we look at traditional medicine systems and strategies from throughout history and all different places in the world. And every now and then in there or fairly frequently in there you see some concept that is described as a matter of waste, as a matter of…

Katja (00:52:17):
Thickness also.

Ryn (00:52:18):
Something that has thickened, and accumulated, and is interfering with healthy function of the body. So in Ayurveda there’s talk about something called ama. And ama is sometimes the label attached to phlegm or mucus that is produced when it’s excessive, when it’s becoming uncomfortable, when it’s becoming problematic. And there’s also other understandings of ama at kind of a deeper level within the body, but a waste product, something to be eliminated.

Katja (00:52:49):
Or an excess. Yeah. And again, if you only knew about that concept at a very high, superficial level, because this is a concept with a lot of nuance. And a lot of people who learn stuff about Ayurveda here in the US don’t speak Hindu or any languages that would help you interpret this properly and also don’t live in that culture to get the context. And so we’re only getting the upper, high-level bullet point kind of understanding, then it’s easy to miss nuance. It’s easy to miss the full explanation.

Ryn (00:53:33):
Yeah. The versions of this exist in Western traditions as well, both ancient and not as modern as modern. So for instance, the famous American herbalist, Samuel Thompson, he would speak a lot about canker is the way he referred to it. A lot of his techniques for helping people to cope with these intense, infectious, febrile diseases were we’re going to sweat you, we’re going to purge you, you’re going to vomit, we’re going to empty your bowels out. That was step one of a process. This is very important because sometimes people now just stop there. No, that was step one of a process that would be immediately followed by astringents and things to tighten up your barrier functions, and your borders, and your hatches, and then we’re going to slowly regenerate you from there. So this is a pretty intense kind of a sequence of treatments to go through. But the idea about canker there was like yeah, in that purging, in that bowel evacuation, part of the idea was there could be this canker, this crud, this gunk that we have to get rid of if we’re going to clear the way for the body to heal itself. So those concepts do exist, but there could be multiple layers of theory and idea that interact with that in order for you to actually work with it in a real-life situation. It could be one stage of a multi-stage process that you’re going to move somebody through with a clear goal in mind. Never in any of these traditions was it whenever you see phlegm, get rid of it as soon as possible. Whenever there’s any mucus at all, that means that things are going wrong, and you’re bad, and you have to get it out of you, right?

Katja (00:55:18):
I mean listen, these concepts were largely before microscopes. And so if you look at the idea of canker and well, you should puke everything, and you should poop everything, and you should sweat everything. What they’re really saying is how can we get whatever has infected you out of your body and get as much of it out as possible? Okay, it’s kind of a crude mechanism, and it’s not the way that I practice or that either of us practices. Also in our landscape of chronic illness today, it’s also not really appropriate. This would have been an approach for infectious disease largely. So if we think about this as the way that they’re understanding a germ situation before we really had great understanding about germs, or largely before Samuel Thompson was sort of like… Okay, but largely before we had a good understanding about germs. You can be like okay, I see where they’re trying to get the pathogens out. This does actually kind of make some sense. And that is part of what mucus is doing. Part of what mucus is doing is trapping it, and then you would remove it, blow it out of your nose or whatever. It is a mechanism to rid yourself of a pathogen, or particulate, or whatever. These ideas are not… It’s not that these are wrong-headed ideas. They are ideas that were formed before we really understood how germs work in the body. But they’re using what tools they had available to try to remove that invading force, and you can see that logic going through it. But then the next steps, like you said, the next steps would be to then tighten up the mucous membranes and try to promote the immune response to whatever’s left, et cetera.

Learn How Herbs Can Help Keep the Slime Skin Healthy

Ryn (00:57:34):
Yeah. And so when somebody doesn’t have that nuance or that detail or even acknowledge that that could exist or be under there somewhere or be within that story, within that tradition, then yeah, they might come to this idea that the mucus itself is the problem. But that’s flattening and making a caricature out of the actual tradition, the actual concepts that we can inherit from these ancestor traditions, right? It doesn’t do respect to them. It doesn’t update them for modern people. It’s just a mistake, really. And so this is where we kind of come back, and we say well, when somebody was working with those methods, they were manipulating the mucus itself. They were saying there’s too much. It’s in the wrong place. It’s not the right consistency. We’re going to adjust that with demulcents, with astringents, with whatever other herbs that are going to serve the job. We’re about keeping those – what’d you call it – slime skin?

Katja (00:58:37):
Yeah, the slime covering. Yeah.

Ryn (00:58:39):
We’re going to keep that healthy. We’re going to keep that optimized. We’re not going to claim that itself is a disease. At most, it would be a marker of something that’s not going properly. And then we make adjustments until things are back where they belong.

Katja (00:58:52):
Yeah. All right. So hopefully at this point you’re convinced that even though mucus is not at all a fun thing to talk about, it is your friend. It is helping you. It is important and necessary for your survival as a living being. And if it is uncomfortable, if your mucus is in a place of discomfort like mine throughout this whole podcast where my nose really wants to drip. Then it’s telling you hey, I’m responding to some problems, and if you’d like to throw some support my way, that’d be great. Thanks. And so, okay, when we’re done with this I’m going to go and get some astringents, and that’s going to be good. Herbs are really good at helping modulate the state of mucus, at helping optimize – I hate that word – the state of mucus. So thanks, herbs.

Ryn (00:59:47):
Thanks, herbs. Again, thanks, herbs. Yeah. All right. So like we said up top, if you would like to learn even more about mucus and about how it’s a critical part of your defenses and part of your immune system, well, we have got a great course for you. It’s called Immune Health.

Katja (01:00:06):
It covers not just mucus, but all aspects of the immune response, and how to have a healthy one, and also how to respond to infectious diseases in the body, et cetera. So that is the Immune Health course. But wait, I have made this special winter health bundle. Because when we’re thinking about immune health, honestly, we so often are also thinking about respiratory health, right? Because so many diseases do come in through the lungs. And so immune health and respiratory health almost are like the same… They’re so close together that they’re like the same topic, the same concept.

Ryn (01:00:47):
We could probably do those with any two systems of the body that we choose to investigate.

Katja (01:00:50):
We could say immune health and digestive health too. Yeah, we actually totally could. But these two, especially because it’s October, and this is the time when everybody’s starting to get sick and whatever else, these two courses are really important together. And so I made a bundle. It’s a special bundle. It is called the Winter Health Bundle, and it is priced at 40% off of if you just got Immune and Respiratory. But if you get them together in this bundle, it’s 40% off. So you don’t need a coupon code or anything. It’s special pricing because it’s a special bundle. Ryn, when he writes the show notes after this, will put a link right in there for you so that you can click right to it. But it’s a really good deal to get not just the Immune Health course, but also the Respiratory Health course together for 40% off.

Ryn (01:01:41):
Yeah. And as always that comes with discussion threads on every lesson, so you can ask a question as you watch the material. Access to our student community where you can discuss your successes and wonderments with the herbal world, with your peers and friends.

Katja (01:01:56):
Not the whole herbal world, just the ones that are at our school. So everybody is really cool, really nice, and there’s never any flame wars. It’s great.

Ryn (01:02:04):
Our subset of the herbal world. Yes. Plus the twice a week Q&A sessions and all the other cool stuff that you’ve heard about before because you are a dedicated listener of the Holistic Herbalism podcast.

Katja (01:02:14):
If you’re still listening now.

Ryn (01:02:15):
And we thank you for that.

Katja (01:02:16):
Yes, we love you for that. And hey, if you’re still listening now, and you haven’t written a review yet, it’s a great time to write a review. That would be so fantastic. It would really help us. You can do it right from your phone. You can do it right now while you’re listening. You don’t have to write a lot. You can just say that I love it. I love it. I love it. I hope that you love it. If you’re still listening, you probably do. Anyway.

Ryn (01:02:41):
Yeah. All right. That’s it for this episode. We’ll be back soon with some more Holistic Herbalism podcasts for you. Until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea.

Katja (01:02:52):
Drink some tea.

Ryn (01:02:53):
And all praise mucus.

Katja (01:02:55):
The healing power of snot.

Ryn (01:02:59):
Bye everyone.

Katja (01:03:00):
Bye-bye.