I’m joined by Jane Christensen, a Master Herbalist and the CEO of Barlow Herbal Specialities, to discuss Jane’s family legacy in the world of herbal medicine and the ways herbs can be a source of deep healing and connection.
In this episode, I’m joined by Jane Christensen, a Master Herbalist and the CEO of Barlow Herbal Specialities. Jane shares the familial and intentional process of creating Barlow Herbal Specialities and the importance of trusting your body’s ability to heal.
Jane was first introduced to herbal medicine through her dad, the founder of Barlow Herbals. Jane's dad was a master botanist, who shared his love of herbalism and the plant world with his family. Jane shares how the depth of knowledge and research mixed with inspiration from her dad was how Barow Herbal was born.
Jane explains the importance of herbs as a primary healing agency as a way to physically and emotionally detox. Jane illustrates the cultivation and powerful properties of herbs specific to Barlow Herbal including Lomatium, a broad-spectrum antimicrobial herb, and a Mushroom Power Blend containing reishi, chaga, shiitake, maitake, and turkey tail mushroom extracts. Plus, we discuss the relationship between plants and the body’s capacity to heal and how herbs can teach us to trust our intuition.
Listen in to learn more about the power of herbs as a healing agent and how they can be integrated into daily life for health, wellness, and vitality.
If you are enjoying these conversations, help me hit 100 reviews in celebration of my 100th episode! (And thank you Ellen for the kindly worded review.) Please subscribe and spread the love by leaving a review and sharing it with your friends. Thank you.
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Dana Frost 0:03
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Vitally You podcast. I'm Dana Frost your host coming to you this week with the CEO of Barlow Herbal Jane Barlow Christiansen. Jane is a Master Herbalist known for her work with herbal remedies and natural healing. She is the owner of Barlow Herbal specialties, a company that focuses on offering herbal products. Jane has a passion for teaching people about the benefits of medicinal herbs and how they can be integrated into daily life for health and wellness. Her knowledge and expertise come both from her personal experience and our family's legacy in the world of herbal medicine. Now in the podcast, Jane shares the bar Barlow herbal origin story which was founded by her dad who was a botanist. So really interesting herbal, really interesting story. I was introduced to bylo herbal earlier this year when I was treating a problematic parasitic infection. And you might remember my episode about parasites, and I'll be sure to include it in the show notes in case you missed it. But before we get started, I want to thank the sponsor of the Vitally You podcast life wave patches. These This is a system that optimizes your vitality and the energetic pathways that harmonize your health. This simple patch and go system improves strength, stamina, sleep, cognition, the appearance of the skin, stress management, just to name a few of the benefits. It might sound too good to be true to it might sound too good to be true, but I promise you it's not give yourself the gift of effortless health this holiday season.
Jane Christensen 2:50
Thank you Dana. I'm happy to meet you and happy to
Dana Frost 2:53
be here. Yeah, it was such a it's such a pleasure. I want the listeners to know that I was introduced to Barlow Herbal earlier in this in the year in the winter when I was healing from a parasite. Heather Houseman who's been a guest on this podcast she's a personal trainer, a health coach an exercise like she's she does corrective exercise. She introduced me to Barlow Herbal and I've been using Barlow Herbal since then I have, I feel like I've got my own little personal collection that I go to on a regular basis. And so I've been following you this whole time. And I just was, you know, I watched one of your little snips this week, one of your emails, and it was like, I really want her to come on my podcast. And you answered right away. So thank you.
Jane Christensen 3:44
Yeah, you're welcome. It's, it's interesting, because I so love what I do. And I have no plans ever to retire. Because it's to me, this is like just ancient wisdom. That, yeah, I love what I do so much. So I'm on my own emails, and I answer, sometimes I'll answer the phone if our lines get busy. But yeah, I'm reachable and I the why not?
Dana Frost 4:09
I really love that Jane, because I feel like we were in, you know, where we are in our modern culture. We don't have that high touch. And you know, we so many people who you know, you're the CEO of Barlow, herbal, whether it's, you know, somebody who's an influencer or, you know, they have a big platform. A lot of things get outsourced. And, you know, we lose that we lose that personal touch, and we need it and more than ever today, we need that, you know, we need that attention. Especially when we're talking about health issues, people really need to know that we care and they need to know there's someone who's willing to like get on a phone call with them, or have an appointment, you know, an in person appointment with them. So I really appreciate that personal touch that you're providing. Thank you.
Jane Christensen 5:01
Well, no, you are so spot on. Because to me, at the end of the day, we are all here to help each other. And if I have some nuggets of wisdom that I can share with somebody, even if it's just returning a quick email or jumping on a quick phone call, and I can't do that all day, all day long. But it it's like, this is why we're here. We're here to help each other and you're right about outsourcing. In fact, my nephew is the one who wrote the book called who not How about how to outsource? How to get your who to help you do the how. And it to me, there's a fine balance between having people help you do things and then actually having that I'm a human being. And I want to connect with another human being and help them. Yes.
Dana Frost 5:48
Yeah, that's really interesting. So Jane, why let's start with introducing Barlow herbal to the community.
Jane Christensen 5:56
Okay, so I was born to a dad who was a medicinal botanist. So I'm CF. So I'm second oldest of 14 kids. So I'm, I'm not an only child. I'm not one or two or three. My parents, my mom and dad had 11 natural kids. And then they adopted three Native American kids. And I'm second from the top. So we grew up, I grew up in the 60s and 70s. And we grew up with this dad, who was teaching us about plant medicine, we had things growing in pots everywhere. You know, going to the doctor only meant if you have a broken bone, or, you know, one of my sisters had her appendix out when she was a teenager. But other than that, we did not go to the doctor. I mean, we did go to the dentist, but that's different. So we grew up in this era, when all of all of these modern things were coming out fast food was coming out, packaged food, processed food to make it easier for you know, here we were, we had this huge garden. We made our own homemade bread. And it was and we had a ton of kids. So we grew up this way. And then we started raising our own kids this way. And the young, my youngest sibling is now 41. So it's like we all kind of left, you know the natural healing route as we went out to go explore and eat all the bad stuff and realize this is not so great for us and we all kind of came back to how we were raised. But then what happened is my dad actually passed away 26 years ago, so he was the age that I am now which is 62 He passed away super young. And I now have been carrying on his work for a while. We long time. And so I have this, this group of medicinal herbals that were formulated by my dad. And I've since added to you know, I've added a whole line of herbs and formulations that, that we do that and it changes the game for people. So really my Arlo herbal was born because my dad was a botanist. And it's in my blood. And in my it's my passion. And and so that's how Barlow herbal was born.
Dana Frost 8:14
That's so interesting, Jane. So what was it like to grow up in your household? Unit?
Jane Christensen 8:22
Wow. Yeah, I will, I will tell you it. One of the most interesting things is because I'm second from the oldest, there was always every year, every couple of years and announcement of another baby on the way. And I just remember as a teenager just going, oh my gosh, there's 10 of us Mom and Dad, you guys are embarrassing us like, but but then it was also like, you have a house full of your best friends. Like there's nine girls in my family and five brothers. But like you, you have this family of best friends. And not only that, you learn how to work together, you're not selfish. Because you can't be you have to work as a team. But also, the cool thing is, is you get these math skills, like I can make a tincture, I can make an Herbal Poultice, I can, you know, I have this wisdom that was just given to me by my parents, because of the way we grew up. And I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Until I became a grown up, I have my own kids. Now I have my own grandkids and it's like, oh my gosh, like this is this is the gold. This is what really, this is the gold. So it was amazing.
Dana Frost 9:32
Wow. And so, um, was there a lot of information that was just passed down? Through doing life together in terms of like creating, you know, the creating an herbal blend or a tank tincture? With you know, was that just passed down to daily life? Or was there a time when your dad said, you know, hey, Jane, I want to teach you this,
Jane Christensen 10:02
you know, is it was a combination of both. But I would say it was mostly just life, just life day to day life. Because think about walking through this modern world, and the things that come at us like infections, or, you know, cuts and scrapes and fevers and things that come at us. It's just, that's just normal life. So there was always like, we'll pull out this remedy. And let's do this remedy. And it wasn't always necessarily herbs, sometimes it was like, let's just sit in a warm tub with Epson salt, and let's just ride this fever out or whatever it could be. So I think that there were moments when my dad would take us, you know, a good example is we would be driving somewhere and he would see a plant on the side of the road that he would want to teach us about. So he would pull over, we'd all pile out this way. But we weren't wearing seatbelts. And we're just too many of us in the car packed in, right. So we'd all pile out. And he would be like, this is a this is this plant. This is the Latin name. This is a common name. You use the flowers and the stems and you grow and he would teach us about just because he saw this plant and it was at the right time to harvest it or put it into a tea or whatever. So it was a very normal part of daily life. Which what a gift right?
Dana Frost 11:19
Yeah, that is so cool. So did you grew up on a large like, I'm trying to visualize this. Were you on a large piece of land?
Jane Christensen 11:27
So we grew up, we grew up in southeastern Idaho. And it was it was a little rural town. That that was kind of in the middle of nowhere. All the little towns got bused to one high school. And we lived on an acre and it was but there were the houses were just like it was a farming community. And we were just everyone had big pieces of land. We didn't we had a big garden. But we weren't we weren't farmers so to speak, but we were surrounded by a farming community. So
Dana Frost 11:58
yeah. And so with the with the like the Barlow herbal like let's go back to when it was your you know, your dad was running the business is there do are the tinctures made, you know, in were they made like on your property somewhere or? Yes. Yeah. In
Jane Christensen 12:16
the garage. In the garage. Yeah, it was very old school. You know, we make most of our tinctures out of 190 Proof organic cane alcohol and there's an extraction process that my dad developed and perfected and he mostly sold to practitioners. But he was also a little bit underground like a lot of people didn't know where he you know, he was hard to reach. He was is kind of a bit of a rebel. As far as you know, he didn't believe in paying income taxes and he thought we were overregulated, which we are. But he was really one of those people that was like, you know, doing things that really made a difference for people. And he didn't want any government agencies to tell him what to do. And I can appreciate that because it is it is an interesting space to be in. But I also find that it's, it's like people are searching for this now. Especially after what we've just been through as humanity during the last three and a half years that yeah, we did we help in the family business. A ton. We were always bottling and labeling. And yes, we learned how to do all of this right along with my dad.
Dana Frost 13:32
So you were all involved in the process. That's so interesting. So we were the workforce. You were the workforce. So fast forward to today. Tell us what is Barlow herbal life today?
Jane Christensen 13:46
Well, for to me, it feels like my my third child, I have two sons. And if I would have I never dreamed when I even when I was an adult that I would be the one carrying on my dad's work. Because my my dad passed away and his business really died with him. Because it's like, how do you become a botanist, you know, he had a degree. And he had, he was just this kind of brilliant scientist who understood plants like nobody else. And it was four years after he passed away that I restarted the company with one of my sisters. And about six months later, she backed out. So she has it was just like, it was too much work. It was it was a lot of work.
Jane Christensen 15:00
And I just my thing is, is I worked in fitness for the first 20 years of my adulthood. And I used to own a gym, it was a personal trainer, I taught exercise classes. In fact, I still taught I actually taught classes for 40 years, I still taught even while I was running this business. But the way the body herbal looks today is there's a core group of formulations that my dad made. But think about I've been going on for 22 years by myself. And I have realized that not only with the depth of knowledge and research and experience that I personally have, I have inspiration from a higher power, and my dad is his presence. In fact, I just even get the chills talking about it. Because when I want to bring a new formulation out, I research I study, I look at all the plants that I that have the potential to go into a certain formula. And then after I do a whole bunch of due diligence, I go into a very quiet space, I become very still. And I kind of go into a meditative place with all of my notes. And I literally get inspiration. And I formulate these really special special things that get to go in and help people be Well, it's, I have the best life. I can't even imagine doing anything different. So oh, that's what it looks like now. It is inspirational, made with love. Everything is pure. And I can't imagine putting something out to humanity that I wouldn't give to my own kids and my own grandkids and people that I care about. And that's that's how we that's how we do it here.
Dana Frost 16:11
I love that. Yeah, that's really beautiful. Jane, thank you so much for sharing that. You know, it really intimate, personal aspect of your process. So do you I'm imagining that you have people contact you on a regular basis about the tinctures they're using from Barlow, herbal. And tell us I don't know, just like I'm, I'm feeling there's like something that you could share about this connection with the people who are using the herbs.
Jane Christensen 16:50
You know, I think that you know, it's been really interesting to me, because I've watched the people who find us over the years like the first you know, the first five years, it was really kind of a big learning curve for me. Even though I knew about the herbs I knew about the plants and I knew how to use them. But running a business doing it without my dad here was was because he was he was running his business before the internet, if you think about that, so he really did things old school. He's put out newsletters, but what I found is as I started really realizing like I love I love teaching people about what I do, I love having a presence and connecting with you know people, someone who's in Australia who wants to learn about this. This is what modern technology can do.
Jane Christensen 17:30
So I think about five years And I started getting a lot does surprise me so much, I started getting a lot of medical doctors who were finding me like not nature paths and acupuncturist and chiropractors, those those kinds of doctors have always been part of what we do even when my dad was around. But what I found is that there would be a medical doctor for two reasons. First of all, they wouldn't want to give their family members, some of the things that they were prescribing to their patients or themselves, it was like, Okay, here's this issue, they know all the side effects of these prescription drugs, and they wouldn't want to take them themselves or give them to their family members.
Jane Christensen 18:40
So a lot of medical doctors who are kind of on that that thought process, were realizing, okay, my lifestyle matters, what I eat, how much I eat, how much I exercise, how much sleep do I get how much hydrate like they know that there is a holistic piece of taking care of this physical body. And they implement that. And you can tell when you go to a medical doctor, the ones that go, Okay, there's, it's more than just taking a prescription drug, you know, and then what would happen is, they would have a patient that would come in that would get diagnosed with something, and something gnarly, something, whatever. And the patient would say, is there anything I can do first natural. And so here you have this doctor, and this is not, it's not, of course, all the doctors, it's, it was started out to be a pretty small percentage. And so they would have a motivated patient. And they would be familiar with something like Arline, because they were using it for themselves in their own families. And so they would sit them so they would start to turn their patients on to say, well, try this first and then do these lifestyle things. So I, to me, that was one of the biggest things that started started my brain going, Okay, no, wait a minute.
Jane Christensen 19:10
You know, there are people in the medical profession who, who first they don't want to do harm, that's the Hippocratic Oath. They know, that's why they went into medicine. And then they're not really taught, they're not really taught all of the things to help their patients be well, because there are so many good good people in medicine, they just don't, they don't know how to help you. And then I think what started to happen is then we started getting contacted by moms of autistic kids who were using our products to go through natural healing for their detoxing them, clearing them up parasites, clearing them of viral loads. And so there was a huge group of moms from this big autism group, they were supporting each other. And so then it was like, Okay, well, we need to make sure that these moms have all the education they need, with this line of stuff that we do. And then the line kind of started growing, depending on the needs of what we were hearing from people. So
Dana Frost 20:36
Oh, that's really interesting, Jane, what, though, you know, for for the people that are listening and maybe, you know, their there they haven't, I'm assuming a lot of the people who are listening, maybe haven't been exposed to Barlow, herbal. And as I mentioned earlier, I have had one herbalist on the show, so we have talked about plants as healing the capacity of plants to heal. Tell me let's let's talk about why it's important for people to consider herbals as, as a primary healing agent as one of the Go twos that they have in their medicine cabinet as opposed to something from the pharmacy.
Jane Christensen 21:19
Yeah, and I am certainly not against prescription medications. I think they have their place. You know, I think that you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater, you know, but I do think that we've learned as modern humans to stop trusting our body and the way it knows how to heal, right. Like, we it's been kind of beat out of us, because what happens if you have a society of people who are, you know, healthy and well in turning to their herbal apothecary, when they when they need something to to, you know, I mean, we shine in trauma care. That's, that is where you know, and last last year, I, I had a water ski accident years and years ago, and last year, I had to have a knee replacement, like that is modern medicine, saying we're going to improve your life, we're going to help you get out of pain.
Jane Christensen 22:20
But I think that it's important for people to realize our bodies know how to be well. If they get the right tools, and that's our normal state is wellness. It's not sickness, it's not being, you know, kind of, you know, conditioned to stay on prescription drugs, because a lot of times, it's like, well, here's a prescription and you'll need to stay on this for the rest of your life. Even when I say you know, no, no, no. And I think the where I find interesting is that, you know, someone will get a prescription drug prescribed to them and they'll they'll, they'll just maybe do a little bit of research on it, but they'll just Trust, they'll just trust, you know, and explicitly. But then when you say, well, here, if you take Tumeric for inflammation, they turn into these researchers and they're all afraid to take tumeric. This is pretty common, at least, from what I'm seeing people are like going, oh, you know, wait a minute, you know, so I think it's Jane.
Dana Frost 23:07
Right? I just I'm so sorry, I have to interject something, I'm bursting to tell a very recent story. And because what you're saying is the exact pushback I get from people in my intimate circle when I bring them, you know, I mean, I raised my kids with this big book, um, natural healing remedies. Okay. And, you know, I, we, we, I mean, I took them to the doctor, I did their yearly checkups, I'm pretty, I was pretty mainstream in that way. But I knew, Okay, you antibiotics all the time aren't good for you, like I knew the more natural way was the better way. And so I have this book that I referred to, but so my kids grew up with that. But when they left to go to college, for the most part, they, especially my two older daughters, they love going to the College Medical Center, because I would always say, Well, I don't need to take you to the doctor, because I can figure out this, you know, let's go look at this. And this. Okay, so that's a little bit of the backdrop.
Dana Frost 24:15
Um, recently, my oldest daughter had a very serious infection. And I don't want to go into all the details on the podcast, but I was helping her through it. And as as, you know, the wound was healing and I and she, she, she was listening to me and doing, you know, some of the things that I was talking about, but it's always with that, well, the doctor says, or, you know, they say that I can't do that. They say, I can't put something on that. Or, you know, and I find it so interesting. And even though I was saying it's totally take that was your elimination cream, that for the wound, and I said, this is absolutely 100% safe, and it's going to help it heal as well. I'm an aroma therapist, so you know that she was coming up with an eye thing, and I'm like castor oil is going to help that lavender oil is fine. I use lavender oil in my eye when I have something going on with my eye along with castor oil. And are you sure I can do that? And you know, Is that safe? And so you know, off? She goes to the urgent care to make sure that that you know, I've got to verify it's a bacteria. That's what you're talking about. We don't trust ourselves.
Jane Christensen 25:21
Well, and we don't just think Dana is it's your own daughter. I know. Yeah. So I know, I think it's a matter of when kids become adults, there is a place where they need to find their own way. And it might be where there's some suffering that they have to go through. Because we can help them not suffer with some of the things that we know. But that's not it's not the way it goes. Yeah,
Dana Frost 25:45
it's the lack of what I find fascinating is the lack of trust that things are actually directly coming from the natural world. And the absolute trust, if it comes from the doctor, and our prescription is
Jane Christensen 26:01
conditioning, it's we've been conditioned to think about what comes at us when we are especially now with our phones, with all the apps with all the reels and the shorts and all the stuff that comes with it. And not just that, but think about when you're driving. There's all the billboards and all the businesses and you might not even be really paid attention. But there is stuff coming into our awareness that is programming us so that when we have an opportunity to say, well, you need to trust your doctor over this. And I'm not saying don't trust your doctor, but we've stopped trusting ourselves. And I, one of the things that I really, really educate people on is you need to start trusting your intuition, the gut feeling you have and your body's ability to heal with natural remedies. Like almost all pharmaceuticals have a base of some type of plant. You know, aspirin comes from white willow bark. I mean, that's probably the best example that people hear about all the time. It's like that and then and then what happens is when the light bulb goes off for people, they start going, Oh, well, maybe they're not telling you the full truth, the medical profession, they go then then it goes and becomes Okay, now I need to be brave, because I have an infection. Like a UTI is a good example. A UTI is very, very painful. I've only ever had one I cleared it up with with elimination, but I'm in a different position than most people. Because I know this plant. I've used it extensively. And I just trust it. It's not even like when COVID hit I'll tell you Dana. I was like, why are people freaking out but And then of course, I know why and that was so that but it was like, I have this whole plethora of herbal and we might mean my whole family's we breezed through it. Breeze, please breeze breeze through it. So I think we have so much coming at us. And we trust the person in the white coat. You know? You mean because yeah, that education and
Dana Frost 28:09
yeah, so, um, let's talk to the person who, you know, who maybe hasn't started an herbal medicine cabinet? And, you know, what are some of the things that you would recommend, like starts here. I I personally, I really love low Meishan. This is I do want to talk about that, because it's something that's very unique to Barlow, herbal. So let's talk about where people can start. But I also want you to talk about that particular product.
Jane Christensen 28:40
Okay. Yeah. And that that actually is a really, really good place to start. But here's what I would suggest for people, especially if you're brand new to thinking, herbal medicine. And this is where is so easy. Everybody can start this way. And this is with your spice spice cupboard. And people don't realize the power in tumeric, and cayenne, pepper, and oregano and rosemary, there are so many medicinal benefits to these to these herbs. Now, here's the caveat, if you have spices that have been sitting in your cupboard, past six months, they'll probably still flavor your food, they'll make your food taste good. But the oxidation and just the length of time, especially if they've been ground up. It the medicinal properties are almost non existent.
Jane Christensen 29:45
So if you can get fresh herbs like basil, put a bid get a basil plant, you can get him in almost any grocery store, you can set it in your kitchen sill on your kitchen counter, or make a put a pot in your house. But start buying fresh herbs and adding them to your to the food that you eat. And you'd be surprised what that would do for your digestion, your metabolism. There's herbs like clothes that clear out parasites, and you can just add those to different things that you make. But then you want to make sure that they're fresh and go through your cabinet. And I think that when people realize, oh, well, for the most part, herbs are just really foods.
Jane Christensen 30:29
Now there are herbs in a category that are very much medicinal, like like automation. And most people have never heard of automation, even though I've my goal is to just, you know, one by one, educate the people who are like really open to healing on this level. Because I'm sure when you got the information you bought from us, it came with all the information about the potential for the rash, right? Yeah, so this elimination is a Native American plant that has never been successfully cultivated. And we go out every fall, and we wild craft this plant. So it's the root of the plant. The properties are the highest in the fall. So we actually just wrapped up our harvest about two weeks ago, when right from what we're recording right now. And basically, we pull the root out of the ground, we chop it up, we do this as a family still. And we lay it on drying racks that has to oxidize and cure for about 60 days before we take it off the racks, we double back and we barrel it up and then we take it to the manufacturer who makes our products for us. So it goes after it's what actually what's known as a broad spectrum antimicrobial. So think about virus, fungus, yeast, some types of bad bacteria. But I have come to believe that its most powerful property is that it's anti viral, and I've seen it clear up UTIs Cold Flu anything that's a virus anything lives under the Epstein Barr family like shingles and mono and the herpes viruses. And I mean, this is mother nature putting this on the earth and it helps humans helps humans be well it's it's amazing.
Dana Frost 31:57
That's really so I will share that when I did read the information when I bought the product. Yeah, but I thought I live so cleanly and I've been doing castor oil packs on my liver for up you know, I like I felt like I don't think I need to do the liver love I think isn't that called deliver love before. Jane, I did get around Oh seriously. I did. It wasn't painful. It didn't hurt. And just as you said it went away. It wasn't extreme, but I was like, Okay, wow. Well, clearly I needed my liver needed a little bit of support first. So the rash is real. Although it's yeah, it's inconvenient more than anything else. So
Jane Christensen 32:43
it sounds like you had to really nice mild rash, because there it is very, very, very intense for some people, the body finally has this tool to eradicate a viral load. And what I find, like you were talking about with the liver, if you if you if your liver has been a little bit stressed and you know, people that are older that had been on a lot of prescription drugs, or even people who are younger, who maybe have abused recreational drugs, and their liver and has just had a lot of, it's just saying, you know, help help, you know, uncle, but then the rash comes out at about a week. And it's just the skin as your largest organ helping you out. And it is very intense. I would say for most people super itchy. There can be swelling and fever. And it can even be an emotional detox for some people because they're finally you know, they don't people don't realize, Oh, I've had this low grade, you know, maybe I'm, my energy is kind of low, I feel kind of fatigue, I kind of have a limited brain fog. And when some people experienced this rash, a lot of those things are clearing out. And they just have this, you know, after the whole emotional, itchy all that part. There's this clarity and there's just wellbeing is really really amazing. But the rash is not pleasant for most people. So okay, sounds like you got off early or like Easy. Easy.
Dana Frost 34:05
Okay, well, that's good to know. Okay, so what are some of the so the kitchen I love that, despite, you know, just looking to the kitchen, and food and cooking and bringing the spices into your diet? Yeah. Are there you know, we're thinking about cold and flu season coming up in the northern hemisphere. I'd like Well, I've been using Cayenne every day that came up for me also as a superfood, and one of the tests I did so I've been using the Cayenne every day. You know? Is that Ganesha? Something that you would say this would be important to have like what are some of the top herbs you would say these are really would be important to have at your disposal. Yeah, and
Jane Christensen 34:51
I love that you brought up cayenne pepper, that is one of my favorite, favorite herbs. And it's this humble little herb that you know, is there's so many reasons it's heart healthy, it's really good for your veins, your vascular system, it's good for your metabolism is good for your digestion. I've actually seen people heal a stomach ulcer using cayenne pepper, which would seem to be counterintuitive. But when cayenne pepper goes in, and this is where a good capsule form of cayenne is good because then goes into your stomach on an empty stomach is where I would suggest it for a special Earth for an ulcer. But then the capsule dissolves and it will nourish the inside lining of your stomach and literally heal an ulcer. But it's so good for your heart and it's so good for your veins. And to me if you like hot, hot spicy foods, cayenne peppers great to add, personally, me I super sensitive tastebuds, I take my cayenne and capsules.
Jane Christensen 37:13
But akinesia is very good, super safe for kids as inflammation, I wouldn't go through cold the flu season if I learned about elimination. And if what I would do is I would say okay, if your first heard about automation, I would take it even before you needed it just to see if you're gonna get the rash and get the rash over with because if you get a very acute infection, like so you get a really bad cold or really bad flu, or even something like strep or bronchitis. I've seen automation work beautifully on those. But you might need to take a really high dose of it, which it's super safe to do. Just take a nice high dose. I've taken automation every hour during the day to clear up an acute infection. So to me, yeah, those are probably some of your best. Elderberry is great for your immune system. Like it name like 1000 But I also think it's good to do adaptogens because it can be stressful during the winter during all the holidays that are happening. And adaptogens help to balance body chemistry and you know, balance your adrenals and things like ashwagandha rhodiola, maca root some of the mushrooms like corte SEPs and Rishi Those are amazing for to have during the during the cold and flu season. Yeah,
Dana Frost 37:13
and you have you have a mushroom blend. I haven't used your mushroom blend yet, but you do right Am I right?
Jane Christensen 37:19
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's got five five mushrooms Reishi Chaga, chalky, Mottaki and Turkey Tail. And those are just Yeah, I mean, that is so good for your immune system and keeping your body balanced and yeah, really, really, really good. Yeah,
Dana Frost 37:41
yeah. Well, so we're we're nearing the end, Jane. We can Did you know I'll have to have you on again, because there's just so many things to talk about when we're talking about herbs? I want to just go back to the question, why? Because we've talked about it. But I want to make it really clear. Why is it important for someone to be thinking about herbal medicine as a go to, and you talk about we've been, we've just get so disconnected to our own, you know, sourcing from within, and the body's capacity to heal. And so my perspective is, when we turn to herbs, we're closer to nature. And there's this this relationship, I feel like when I'm using the herbs, I feel like there's a, this relationship between the plants myself, I feel like I'm taking ownership, it's a little bit of my own dominion over my health instead of, you know, even though we may have to look at bar, look, go to bar lower bowl and see, okay, well, what's going to help me with this particular situation? I feel like herbal medicine really helps us be more connected to ourselves.
Jane Christensen 38:54
Yeah, I mean, everything you said is exactly perfect. And that, you know, I think that we're in a really important time in human history, where there's some, there's some of the systems that have not really been of service to us, in the, in the form of like, the government, the medical system, maybe the education system, definitely the media, you know, the media is not there to really give us information to help us with some of these regulatory bodies that are supposed to protect us or really, you know, kind of for decades have been pandering to the, to the big, you know, the big pharma and all that. So, I think that right now, there's a lot of people are realizing that it's really important for them to take personal responsibility for their own health. And when you start learning about herbs, you kind of go wow, this is how human beings have been taking care of themselves for 1000s of years. It's only in the last 100 150 years that we've really stepped out of the way we've always been taking care of ourselves. We've always been doing that. So I think if we tune back in and really realize that there's a lot of propaganda out there to distract us. But we don't have to, you know, step on the outside, it's more important now than ever to be an outlier. Stand stand on the outside of the crowds. And start to trust your your intuition and your body's ability to heal and then start being brave and take personal responsibilities. I think that's really where it all boils down to.
Dana Frost 40:25
I really love that Jane thank you for sharing that. So I there is a question that I asked all of my guests at the very end of the show and that is what does feeling younger while growing older mean to you? What does feeling younger while growing older mean to you?
Jane Christensen 40:41
Well, it to me, it just feels feels really normal until you sometimes look in the mirror and go oh crap. I mean, to me getting older just means wiser, more beautiful. You know, like, I love that I'm in my 60s. I love it. I love the wisdom I have I love my grandchildren. I love that my kids are these beautiful adults and I you know, I would I don't judge anyone who does things like Botox and facelift. I don't judge any of that. But to me when I look into the face of like a 90 year old person, and they have this sparkle in their eyes and this deep the deep lines in their face and the the joy of just being alive on this planet like that is that is aging. That is beauty right there. And that is that's what that's what I want to be.
Dana Frost 41:38
That's really beautiful. Jane, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank
Jane Christensen 41:43
you, Dana. I'm honored to be here with you