Crazy Superfoods You've Never Heard Of, The Little-Known Libido-Enhancing Berry, Remineralizing Your Body With Lubricating Plant Oils & More With Kuaui Farmacy's Doug Wolkon.

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, there's just, you know, backyard gardenings with permaculture systems spread throughout, designed to build soil and nourish the plants of our food. As medicine is what allows the fuel in our body to be used in such a way where our performance can be that next level, using it on the daily and not waiting till something breaks or something has to get fixed, but rather building that immune system up so strong that your awareness is in tune with your body, that your ability to make the best choices for you on a day to day basis.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

I'm pretty excited because as soon as I finish this podcast, I am off to make myself some raw ginger coconut carrot cake. It's a recipe that I got from the website of today's podcast guest who happens to actually produce, amongst many other things, this ginger honey. It arrived at my house yesterday, so I'm really stoked. And ginger in and of itself is this amazing superfood that my guest on today's show, Doug Wolkong, grows in Kauai. But then he actually infuses this stuff into honey. He infuses noni into honey. He infuses cacao into honey. He has a lot of cool stuff, but honey's going to be the star of this cake. I'm going to make my family for dinner tonight. It's going to be like carrots and shredded fresh coconut meat and I'm going to use some bananas and some of this ginger honey and some allspice powder and macadamia nuts for my base. And I'm going to kind of blend that in the food processor and then make a frosting out of coconut meat and a little bit more of the ginger honey, some coconut water, a little bit of colostrum. So it's going to be amazing. And anyways, the reason I'm telling you all this is because I love to use this guy's curries and spices and powders and lotions and tinctures. I did a huge meat fest barbecue at my house two nights ago and we used for the pork, we used this wonderful Kauai pharmacy curry, which was just absolutely amazing. It's like this curry that just tastes like lifeblood. It's so good. So anyways, Doug's been on my show before. I visited his, his pharmacy down there in Kauai when Laird Hamilton brought me over there. The big wave surfer, he brought me over and we were like eating turmeric, like carrots, and cutting open these cacao fruits and eating the beans out of the cacao. And I was just blown away by the vast array of 80 different varieties of healing plants and food orchards that were down there. And then this whole team using solar dehydrators and, and different ways to like cure herbs and do herbal teas and tinctures and hydrosols and salves and, and honey, like I mentioned, and, and a whole lot more. So anyways, Doug has been running this pharmacy for a while and it's crazy what he can do on just a couple of acres down there in Hawaii. And I just, I love his stuff so much. I use it so much that I want to get him back on the show to talk a little bit more about what he's been growing, what he's been up to, any favorite new recipes. And I'm really excited to be talking to Doug again. So, Doug, welcome back, ma'.

Am. Thank you. Ben and I appreciate the intro. It's been quite the run. We got the farm about 10 years ago. My wife and I, Jenna moved about 15 years ago to Kauai from the New York area. My wife's an industrial designer, or was, and I was actually in the, in the finance, private equity space. We were ready to kind of move on and test new waters. When we got to Kauai, you know, we realized we had a lot of healing to do. We had been through a somewhat trauma filled birth of our first child. And it was time, unbeknownst to us, to put our healing into our own hands and take responsibility, you know, learn about how to heal ourselves. And that's really what brought us to Kauai and inevitably founded the farm.

Yeah. Weren't you, I seem to recall, because you talked a little bit about this in the last podcast. Weren't you kind of not only traumatized and going through a lot, but you yourself were pretty like unhealthy when you started this pharmacy?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was a competitive high school athlete, I like to believe, and by the time I was in my early 30s, 33ish, I was solid, you know, 30 pounds overweight, about 6ft, you know, 200 pounds. So now I'm down to about 170 and feeling, you know, pretty lean and muscular. And I, I play basketball, you know, a couple times a week with some teenagers and guys in their 20s. So what the herbs have done for me is, you know, they've, they've allowed me to speed up My metabolism, the self awareness is unprecedented. You know, the, the vast majority of vitamins and minerals that we're able to access throughout the planet in other supplements and different foods as medicine is somewhat, truth be told. So what we've done on the farm is we've exposed and made available what the Spice Islands had 100 years ago when the Europeans or hundreds of years ago when the Europeans came and kind of raided that place. And that jungle medicine since then has been somewhat lost. Things like black pepper, cinnamon, I mean, they risked hundreds of men to go find that. What was in that black pepper? It certainly wasn't the black pepper that's on the table right now. Right. So when I was able to find, you know, high grade turmeric and, and high grade cinnamon, what it did to my whole system as far as wake it up and, and bring youth to know my ability to heal, I just couldn't deny it. So, yeah, we stayed on a path. Starting about 15 years ago, I slowly but surely trimmed down. Even in the last couple years, I've, I feel like I've made huge leaps and bounds through the medicine. Again, it's awareness. So what the medicine, the plant medicine does is it, it, it brings in those vitamins and minerals that maybe we weren't, haven't been exposed to in our lives, haven't been able to call in. And once we're able to do that, our alkalinity shifts, our awareness shifts, and then our diet and lifestyle shifts accordingly and we become a lot more connected, a lot more in tune to ourselves and what we need. There's nothing like improving on self awareness as it relates to self healing.

I'm just curious because you show up on Kauai and I think, what is it about 4 acres down there that you're growing all this stuff on?

Yep, four acres.

Okay, so you've got four acres, but it's like, is it, was it just like jungle land? Was it like pasture? Like, like what was it when you walked on there and even thought about just beginning to grow stuff, what did it look like at first?

So it was a former horse ranch, what, you know, a lot of people call gentleman's estates out here. It had about 15 fruit trees on it, some star fruit, some orange trees, coconuts, macadamia nut trees. It was pretty diverse, but it was jungle and it was pasture for the horses. We were just ignorant enough coming from our east, you know, east coast lifestyles to think we could redevelop and create this medicine cabinet of plants. Looking back on it, I can't believe we made the choice. I'd like to think, you know, it's this cherry coated story of healing, but it never is, right? I mean, healing is, you know, the pain and suffering is. There may be a day when pain and suffering isn't part of a healing story. But for me to date, certainly there's been a lot of it. You know, we raised the white flag so many times and if we didn't dig a hole big enough that we couldn't climb out of, I think we would have have left.

Wow. Well, what was, what was the first thing you ever grew down there?

So we put the tulsi in first. So the holy basil. You know, we were first connected with the noni plant when we got here. It helped me with my back. It was abundant in the jungles. Jenna and I harvested it wild all over the island. It's everywhere. And the noni plant is such big circulation medicine. I wrote a piece called the all everything medicine. It can do everything and anything. And it's kind of my first aid, cure all.

You're referring to the noni, not the.

Tulsi, Right, right, the noni. But what I found the tulsi, which is the ayurvedic super herb, what they refer to as elixir of life. Over a, you know, billion people in the world pray to this plant and the majority of the western world has never heard of it. It's mental. The, the self awareness that it gave me and brought to my life was just mind blowing. So what I mean by self awareness, just like my digestive tract, like it was no longer so confusing as to what what was, how did I tap? How can I tap into my metabolism? How can I tap into all the things about my health that were just confusing? And the tulsi plant kind of separated them and pulled them apart and allowed me to just again be self aware of what I was eating, what I was doing, how I was sleeping, and it's a slow process. So anyway, we planted a tulsi garden.

It sounds almost like a mindfulness herb. I mean, I'm familiar with tulsi or holy basil, as something that someone will use to support the nervous system, you know, as, as like an adrenal support or adaptogen. A lot of people use it for relaxation, for example, you know, sipping it as a tea. And I actually, I never really thought about it the way that you describe it, almost as a way to become more aware and more mindful. But, but do you actually find like it'll do things like increase sensory Perception or mental clarity or anything like that.

Yeah, I mean mindfulness is a brilliant way to describe it, certainly self awareness, clarity, key. But what I find, and my research has also proven out, but what I find in real time is calmness of the breath, calmness of the digestive tract. If we're able to calm the breath and calm the digestive tract and calm the respiratory system, our ability to become self aware goes through the roof. Right. So these plants aren't magical. They go down deeper into other layers that we're not able to access. And, and in the case of Tulsi, they provide the calmness in order to tap in. Right. And then we all have the tools in us. It's just a question of allowing those tools to come to the surface and accessing them. So the Tulsi specifically allows us to access the respiratory and digestive tract in a calm way.

Yeah, I actually, I had some this morning. So you make this one blend. You have a whole bunch of different tea blends, but you have one called Purity, which is almost like a cleansing blend. I know it's got Tulsi in there, I know it's got noni in there too. So you got two of the biggest superfood teas in there. But then it's got like ginger and papaya and like, I think it's like a Puerto Rican cilantro and turmeric and a bunch of stuff that's designed to enhance the liver detox pathways. I actually will drink that on the mornings that I do a sauna because with the sauna I'm already sweating and detoxifying anyway. So I start off with that tea. I actually put a few grinds of a certain type of pepper called grains of paradise pepper, which helps to upregulate a lot of the parts of the mitochondria that help you to burn fat, you know, as you're in there in the sauna. But I, but I do a few shakes of that into the Purity and drink that go down to the sauna. It's a, it's amazing. But it has those two in it, the, the noni and the Tulsi. And with the noni, you know, you're right, you did write an article. I'll find it and link to it in the shownotes. By the way, if you're listening in, the shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Food as Medicine. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Food As Medicine because a lot of the stuff they grow down at this pharmacy. Yeah, it's food. But as you're already hopefully realizing, it's also medicine, this noni. Tell me more about it. Because it's like, you know, you. You hear, like, people talk about moringa and they'll be like, oh, it's the best of the best. Or they'll talk about, like, sacha inchy protein, and be like, oh, nobody's ever heard of this. Like, it's all you need, you know, or. Or baruch and nuts. You can take it to the desert island and it's like all you'd need to sustain life. And you, I kind of hear noni bandied about is something similar. It's like a lot of people who are into. Are like, yeah, if there was one plant that could use, it'd be this one. Can you explain a little bit more about. About why you're such a big fan of noni?

Yeah, the versatility is the key. You know, if I was gonna. If I was gonna go into the jungle and not and bring one product with me, one plant with me, it might be noni. Assuming there's no noni in the jungle. It's the versatility that's key. It really can address any and all ailments, inflammation.

It's all about circulation. So it can cut through the deepest of toxins, cut through the deepest of blockages, big, largest of.

Thick, any kind of calcified matter and create that circulation. It is somewhat of a blood thinner, but it does it in such a way where it's nourishing the blood. So at the same time, it's thinning it, it's nourishing it. And again, so I do it like, I'll take the noni fruit, I'll put it, you know, scrub it in my hair, I'll scrub it all over my skin. But we use the leaf in our teas. And the leaf is very balanced.

Well, I was going to say. Just a second. All I knew of, because I've seen the leaf, it's fricking huge. You know, it's this massive flat leaf. I didn't even know there wasn't noni fruit. It actually has a fruit.

You know, we're one of the few people that use it, use the leaf. And the Hawaiians back in the day, which is what we read to onto the leaf, was that they put the leaf in water and made tea out of it. They also use the leaf to wrap around any ailments in order to create circulation. So they'll warm the leaf and Again, wrap it around their knees or shoulders, wherever the ailment is. The fruit is certainly famous today and more used throughout the islands, in Polynesia and anywhere near the equator. So the fruit is like a. I mean you should check out the fruit. It's this stinky, you know they, they call. It's like the throw up, the vomit fruit. It's so stinky.

It's not that one that smells like a, like a rotten, like a, like a. Smells like a sock. Is that one.

That's the one. That's the one.

Does it have a different name than noni fruit? Because I thought it had a different name. The stinky one that someone was showing me when I was down there in Kauai. Or maybe there's two Stinky.

That's the one. Yeah. No ni. And again, I'll use that. Like I busted my lip playing basketball the other day and I just put it right on my lip, which is, you know, most people would never put it near their mouth. Just raw noni. But they fermented fruit and they make a juice out of it. And the juice which they sell in a lot of the whole foods or whatever is a great like bath. So if you were to like hurt your fingers or your legs or you could make a spray out of it or also just soak it in a bath. That naughty fruit juice is something that know to not have in the hospitals and the doctor's office is just again mental.

You know what I'm thinking of though? I, I just remember, I think I'm thinking of durian. Isn't durian? Another one's like a stinky fruit.

Yeah, it's stinky, but that's more of like a sweet, delicious. You know where this is like pure vomit medicine. You know, you think robituss and stuff. This puts robotuss. You know, that's crazy. And again, potency, the medicine it's so potent in, it's all good. So in any case, the noni, the leaf though I find to be more balanced, it's more abundant as it relates to how it grows. We're more into the leaves as it relates to our, our platform because of the balance as well as the abundance on, in most of the plants. So, you know, our plant medicine farm is consists of 80 different plants. We grow them in a biodiverse space. So they're all interspersed. There's no monocropping, there's no rows of anything. There's just, you know, backyard gardenings with permaculture systems spread throughout and closed loop gardening and farming that, you know, is designed to build soil and nourish. And nourish the plants.

Yeah, it's a special place. By the way, I should mention that for anybody who happens to go through Kauai, I was actually going to originally record this podcast live with Doug down there because I visited his. His farm a couple of times. My sons, however, convinced me that they really, really, really wanted to go to the Grand Canyons or go to the Grand Canyon instead of Kauai, which is why Doug and I are recording this and not doing it over some cacao tea down there in Kauai. But anyways.

The farm tours are always available for those of you who want them. I'll link to all this stuff@BenGreenfieldFitness.com FoodIsMedicine but the honey that you make out of this noni fruit, now I kind of understand because you sent me some of this honey, and I want to hear a little bit more about what a raw activated tropical honey is, because this honey that you sent me is different. And literally, after we finish recording Doug, I'm going upstairs to make the carrot cake with the ginger honey that arrived from the islands yesterday to my house. But the noni honey, you sent me that a few weeks ago, and I've been kind of. I've drizzle it over my lunchtime salads. Like, you know me, I'm kind of like a low carb guy, but I like a little bit of honey here and there, which is actually, it helps this toto stabilize your insulin levels like a good natural honey does. And it's just wonderful on a whole host of levels, especially for detoxification and for a lot of the raw enzymes that it has in it. But can you get a little bit more into this whole process for me? Because I've got the jars of the noni honey and the ginger honey and the cacao honey, and oh, my gosh, the turmeric honey. I remember when Gabby Reese gave that to me when I was down at her and Laird's house. She's like, you got to try this. I'm like, where did you get this? It's amazing. But how do you actually make this, this honey? What's the process like?

Our tea house that we call it, our place that we do all our crafting is in the middle of our gardens. We have large solar dehydration facility, or at least large for us. There's six doors that we run about 20 shelves, and we run those all day long, in and out. So we're harvesting fresh plant medicine all day long and also running these dehydrators that are. That are solar powered. And it's a slow curing process. So that slow curing process retains all the benefits of the plants as if they were potently fresh. And the freshness is something that, you know, is so difficult to find and.

In the world today. So obviously, if you had your backyard garden or went to the farmer's market would be awesome. But as it relates to, you know, getting stuff in the mail or whatnot, our stuff is super fresh. So many times it's. It was in the garden, you know, a week ago or two weeks ago. And. And so we'll go out and harvest, whether it be noni or. Or cacao or lemongrass, and we'll cure them in the cure process, depending on the plant medicine. So, like in the case of. Of cacao, which, again, cacao, so everyone knows, is what we make chocolate out of in the world. But the raw beans are in this pod, and that's what. Originally we had an abundance of raw cacao. And what do we do with all this raw cacao, these beans? Yeah, and they were so. They're so bitter. And so that's why we. When people make, you know, chocolate, they mix it with sugar.

Honey, in my opinion, is one of the most undervalued resources for medicinal healing on the planet. I mean, it's the base. It's one of the bases of our antibiotic system, medicine system. It's the key to antibiotics. In any case, we took this undervalued honey, which, again, on Kauai, you're talking about receiving the nectar of the jungle and mixing it with cacao, which is super bitter. So the sweet and the bitter make for what otherwise would be chocolate. And the chocolate is next. Next level. Right. So we put those together. But obviously, we're Kauai pharmacy. We're all about the next level medicine. We want to, you know, we want to get you as much as possible in a spoonful. So then we put in the ginger and turmeric in that first batch of ginger, turmeric, cacao honey. And since then, you know, and that's what you had at Laird's, and that's what we, you know, had for the last couple of years. Is that cacao, ginger, turmeric, honey?

Yeah.

And it was kind of our staple dessert slash honey medicine. And then since then, we've gone into having other. We've had the noni medicine and. And we put the noni fruit in there. We just Launched the cacao honey. Just cacao? No, ginger and turmeric. And then we also have the ginger and turmeric honey, which again the ginger and turmeric honey. Great for desserts, great for cooking. But also I find it like I have a 8 year old girl and you know, if she's up coughing at night, I mean, what better medicine? How, how else to get the turmeric in her system or the ginger in her system. But I like the turmeric honey actually for her. Yeah, ideally just put it on a spoon and she'll just, you know, eat that up and loving it. And the turmeric, you know, ideal for anti inflammatory, get rid of any congestion in the nasal passages. And again we have about six different honeys that cacao honey that we just launched is quite the dessert. Decadent flavor.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're right. I think probably of the most, the most addictive is probably that cacao honey. But there's something about the flavor of that noni honey that I just find in tree. I may have to give you a taste of your own medicine. Literally, Doug, because we just got bees yesterday. We actually, we just started our bee raising project yesterday. So I might have to figure out how to do like a little northwest type of honey to send down your way, you know, because we got, we got our own medicines that grow up here on our land. We got wild mint and organ, grape and plantain and you know, of course a wide variety of alpine trees. You know, we got a lot of tamarack and ponderosa and Douglas specifically here. And then, and then we also, we just grow a ton of stuff. You know, we grow, we grow stevia and thyme and rosemary. And I could see doing something like, maybe like an organ grape, grape berry, organ, grape roots type of tea. At some point, if I do, I might have to pick your brain. But yeah, it's amazing because the honey has all the activated enzymes and the antihistamines and so it helps with, with allergy season. It's just, it's, it's so good to drizzle on top of stuff and I'm, I'm pretty much addicted to it. But I did want to ask you something because you, you use, you, you use the word that I think probably some people might not be familiar with. Doug, you said, you said high grade. You said kind of like you'd never had high grade turmeric or high, high grade cinnamon. And how perhaps when the royalties were sending people off to these spice islands, you know, the Maluku Islands, for those of you unfamiliar with, with the archipelago on the east of Indonesia, it's where, you know, a lot of these, these high end spices would come from, you know, and there is, there's even wars, you know, people got massacred over, over these, over these spices during the Dutch Portuguese war, which is the Spice War, you know, the Spice Islands. But these were a different kind of spice. What, what is it that makes a spice a high grade spice? Doug, do you, you know, the most.

Powerful empires of, throughout the history of time, if you look at their medicine cabinet, it was filled with the most simple of medicines. You know, rosemary, sage, all the Mediterranean herbs, they used them all around. So whether it was by their bedside, you know, on their night table for dreams and to perfume the air, or if it was in their tea or just in their garden, to oxygenate the air, I mean, the immune system that we believe that we're nourishing and creating in our body is dependent on the immune system in our environment. Right? We're not separate. So the plant medicine that we grow all around or the, or the flora that's in the ear is just as critical to the, to the immune system in our, of our bodies. When you ask me about high grade, you know, the key to higher grade is freshness. That's number one. So how fresh is your plant medicine? You know.

It'S, you know, close behind that or close to it is how it's grown, you know, what intention, how much love, how much care, what's the soil, what's the nutrients? You know, it's not about what the plant eats about, it's about what the soil eats. So if your soil is not high grade, if your soil isn't nourished, if your soil isn't fed and built over ages of time. So in that case, in the Spice Islands, you know, that was soil that was originally, it was jungle soil, which is, there's no better soil than that. So now we're in, you know, this, this time where so much of our land has been picked over.

And, and we're forced to kind of, you know, man or woman handle this land and, and, and you know, have it be a little bit more mechanized because, because we can't find the raw space or the raw jungle like they did back in the day. So building soil intentionally is the first and foremost to that high grade medicine. And in our case, you know, biodiversity is critical to that. You don't find plant medicine that's not grown monocropped, you know, in the monocrop way, and the Monocrop technique inevitably calls in the pests. So you're forced to deal with fertilizers and pesticides in order to deal with the pests. Because the monocrops don't create any kind of immune system that is, that allows for longevity of the plants. You know, we have perennials that we grow so we don't have to turn all the plants over and the land over. And we do cover crop, but we're more focused on longevity of these plant gardens. And as a result, the biodiversity is key, right? They're, they're dropping all their leaves and dropping their fruits into the ground and nourishing the plants around them. And there's no finer, more effective way to nourish plants than their friends and cousins and family around them. And if that family is diverse, even better. If it's monocropped with tractors and fertilizers and pesticides, then, you know, it's, it's dead medicine. And we can't imagine the space between the average, you know, the average supplement, if you will, or plant medicine and something that's done with intention from, from start to finish. It's, it's mind blowing the spread. It's, it's like, you know, professionalism, you know, anything we do as a profession, whether it be working out or performance, you know, you look at people that practice it at the top level, right? The top level. So professional athletes at the top level versus someone that like just is getting in the game. There's no, that's the same thing as how we grow our plant medicine, right? We're at the top level, the professional level. The intention is so refined, right? And I use that or too to how we, how we use the plant medicine, right? The use of the plant medicines, a fruit like noni, how we use it, how we use it in our bodies, how we use it in our mouths. The intention, the experience, the refinement of our food as medicine is what allows the fuel in our body to be used in such a way where our performance can be, can again be that next level.

Speaking of performance, by the way, you, you do these serums now. You send me a few of the serums, the sensual serum which we actually have up on our bedside now for obvious reasons. It's like a cacao ash, ashwagandha infused serum, which is kind of interesting because like cacao and ashwagandha are kind of traditional aphrodisiacs and they're in this, they're in this little dropper bottle of a serum that you sent Up. But then I had my massage therapist use the comfrey and noni serum that you guys made. And I know that comfrey root's very, very unique in terms of what it can do for the joints and what it can do to the. Just like the vitality the bones and the tendons and the ligaments. Can you get into comfrey and then why you kind of paired comfrey with noni to make this serum? Because it was just like I just felt amazing after that massage and I swear. But you know, obviously I have a good massage therapist, but I think part of it was she literally like I had a two hour rub down with comfrey and noni, so, so fill me in on this comfrey noni serum.

So the comfrey is like the stalwart of the garden. You know, they, we use it as the perimeters. It keeps the weeds out. We, we harvest the leaves to the big comfrey leaves as, and we put it in a, in a tea and we feed it back into the gardens. It's, it's got the big nitrogen in it for the gardens. So again, we use it in so many ways, but it's actually food for our, it's fertilizer for our plants. The comfrey is known as the, the warrior plant. Knit bone K N I K N I T dash B O N E knit bone. So what I like, you know, the company is great if you were to have a break, a fracture, but I like it better as, as kind of medicine that we use to, to strengthen our bones, ligaments and tendons. Add suppleness. Right, Suppleness. When, when it comes to bones is key. And ligaments. So how do we get those bones, ligaments and tendons more supple? Well, the day to day work with the comfrey plant is what allows you to, you know, I fell off my skateboard the other day and I felt like I bounced, you know. And why did I bounce, by the.

Way, by the way, Doug, how old are you?

48.

48. I respect you, man. You're hooping and skateboarding down on the island. That's impressive.

I took a hard fall of the cement the other day that I hadn't experienced in a long time. But anyway, I bounced. I was scared as hell to, you know, oh my God, I'm in trouble. But I did, I bounced and I, and I, I look at why that happened and I believe it's the amount of comfort use because the supplement, you know, I've been able to, to grab and, and access that suppleness and so that's what the comfrey does. If you, if you. We harvest the root, the root grows 10ft into the ground, minimum. No one really knows how deep it grows because no one's really gone that deep. The plant's only about three feet. And. And we'll harvest. We'll harvest to two feet down maybe, you know, 18 inches. And if you pull it out, it looks like a bone. So the thicker the root, the comfrey root, the more it looks like the femur, the thinner, the more it looks like the ulna or the radius or even the phalanges. So it mimics bone marrow, and it mimics the bone marrow of a baby.

Crazy, really.

So what you're accessing is that salt, that super salt, supple calcium that you're infusing into your bones and accessing, you know, minerals that. That aren't available anywhere else. So for comfrey, again, not to be in the. In the pediatrician's office and our osteoporosis treatments is just, again, mind blowing. So how we infuse it, Comfrey is always, you know, we come up with a product. We're always like, oh, comfrey noti. Right away, we can just put comfrey notion. And it's. It's. It's. So, yeah, so we found this macadamia oil that's fresh. And you know, the macadamia oil that. That comfrey noni serum, as well as the. The sensual serum that has the cacao and ashwagandha in is so nourishing and hydrating, right? Because. Oh, yeah, we don't. Yeah. What we don't appreciate is how much we can hydrate through lubrication. I don't care if, you know, high grade coconut oil would do the trick too. But lubricating the chain every day, right? Lubricating our knees, our ankles, our shoulders, our neck, Hydrating through the external largest organ in our body. Our skin is so critical to self healing and maintenance and performance.

Oh, yeah. I mean, like, Doug, I've got knees, especially my left knee gives me issues. And I actually keep your comfrey salve. You know, like I mentioned, I keep that sensual serum next to my bedside now. And by the way, that macadamia nut oil. You know, again, we're all adults here, so we can talk about this. That stuff has, like, such a sweetness to it. You know, obviously, because of how my wife and I are using up in the bedroom, I may or may not have gotten my fair taste of this sensual serum. And it. It tastes amazing. But that ashwagandha and cacao. And it's something about the texture, that macadamia nut oil like, it's just, it's smoother and softer and just more frictionless even than coconut oil. So there's something to that. But I keep the comfrey, the salve. I actually keep that next to my bedside when I wake up. I feel like an old man, but oh well, I'm going to say the same way I wake up, I take a few dabs. That comfrey salve and for the reasons that you've just stated, its ability to pass transdermally through the skin and support not only the moisture but also the stability of the joints or the health of the joints and the ligaments. I massage it into both of my knees. When I wake up in the morning, literally it's one of the first things I do. I wake up before I go and do my coconut oil pulling and my tongue scraping and all my silly little ayurvedic things. I rub this comfrey salve into both of my knees. And occasionally if my elbows are sore because I've been riding a lot the day before, climbing or doing pull ups or something, I'll rub it into the elbows too. But that salve, holy cow, that stuff really does the trick. Also, I assume you use that remineralizing.

Your body through lubrication is such a, it's such a practice that we don't talk about. You know, I, I have a couple pro athletes that I, that I coach as well and, and, and they, they use these serums and the salves every day. And I have them lubricate their entire body from, from head to toe thoroughly again with the comfrey, but also the serums. And, and it's after their, their, it's in the mornings, it's as often as possible. I find it to be, you know, the guaranteed self love treatment. You know, it takes five minutes, maybe a minute if you're just going to do your knees, but five minutes on your body and, and you're guaranteed to, for your body to be, to be happier from before and after. It doesn't, you know, cost the kind of money that a massage costs. You can do it yourself. You can do it in your own convenience. Yeah. And as you do it, your body so much appreciates the nourishment, the hydration, the lubrication and again the, the remineralization through the, through the skin. Because when you try and remineralize your body through your mouth all the time, your organs that are you know, your organs are so emotional. They've, they've taken on so much taxation through their life, through your lifetime because of all the food that you've put through it. And then they're forced to distribute it to your muscles and your bones and your ligaments. But if you lubricate directly through your body, you're not, you're not taxing your digestive tract at all and your organs. So it's a much more efficient way, in my opinion, to get to the individual areas of your body without having to allow force your digestive tract to break it all down and distribute it.

Related, I guess the anti inflammatory piece, obviously a lot of people will use, well, not as many people use comfrey, a lot of people use turmeric and some people use ginger as well as an anti inflammatory. But let's talk ginger because like I mentioned, you know, in celebration of our podcast, today I'm gonna be making your carrot cake with the ginger honey and I'll put that recipe in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com foodismedicine but I want to get into this ginger because there's a form of ginger that you grow. I think it's called galangal. Galangil, something like that. Galangal, yeah. What is that exactly?

It's a much more robust ginger. I mean, we use both, we use actually a yellow and a white ginger that our boy Ben Ferris, who's kind of a brilliant farmer on the island, he helps us with. And, and. But we grow a galangal ginger and a Thai ginger. It's, it's a perennial, so it doesn't have as much seasonal nature to it as the white and yellow ginger. You can put it in the jungle and it'll hold its own. It's a, it's a bigger, more heartier plant to harvest and dig out. It's a beautiful plant, throws off a beautiful white flower. I find it to be much spicier, more flavorful. We, we put it in all of our, our medicines right next to the white and yellow ginger. In some ways it's lighter, but in some ways it's hardier too. The, the ginger generally, I mean, you're talking about probably the most famous, widely distributed plant medicine on the planet in the history of time.

Really? Ginger is ginger?

Yeah. You know, in the days of, of the Chinese Empire and yeah, I don't think there is a more popular plant medicine on the planet than ginger. So, so what does it do? It, first of all, it kills things. Right. That Spice will help you kill any pathogens or things that you don't want in your body. It's extremely alkalizing. It, it nourishes, speeds up and, and fulfills what we need as far as our metabolism goes. Right, so.

Metabolism, yeah, it's a very, very kind of like, it's like kind of like a heating route.

Yeah, it's. I mean, Chinese medicine is all about warmth. I mean certainly balance between hot and cold. But as far as medicine goes, so much of the medicine is about warming the body. And as you warm that metabolism up and, and you're able to get that, that fire going, right? Because that's what you're trying to stimulate is the fire in your body to break down, you know, any kind of gluten or any kind of challenging carcinogens that are in the body. The ginger eats it, right. If you put ginger with some kind of acidic food in a box, the ginger is going to eat the food. Right? And that's what it does is it literally breaks it down with its heat and its spice. So that's what it's doing. It's igniting that metabolism and that fire and it's bringing, in my opinion, a more youthful metabolic system and function to your body. So I view ginger and turmeric, those two root medicines which again stimulate your lowest chakra, your lowest region of your body, your center. Right. Those root medicines, ginger, turmeric, comfrey, ashwagandha, kava, those root medicines are going to stimulate your root chakra. And when you can stimulate that and nourish that, you've tapped into the center. And that center is where your willpower is coming from, your intuition's coming from. Those are the key, right? Willpower, intuition. If you can access those, then you have that full mind body connection and those medicines will nourish it.

Well, I'll tell you what, it goes good. I know you follow. Well, you follow largely plant based diet, right?

Pretty much. I recently brought some fish into my diet.

Okay, gotcha. I was going to say the curry that you got, that one form of ginger, the galangal, if I probably still mispronounce it galang, ginger and the ginger. And then you've got the turmeric in there and you have the curry leaf that you guys grow, the Hawaiian chili pepper and then this super aromatic lime. Oh my gosh. I use that as something about how it pairs with pork. Specifically I use that on like my bone in pork chops. I cross hatch them with a knife, I rub them down with the curry Blend. What I like to do is actually I'll sous vide them in there for a couple of hours in the water bath. Then I take them out and just do a quick sear on either side. And that curry just kind of like it encrusts along the outside of the pork chop and you cut into it. Oh, my gosh. It's just freaking amazing, that curry.

Yeah. So in Eastern cultures, you know, and so many of them, you know, when they eat meat, it's symbiotic with these spices. Right. Because they don't believe it's so easy to break down. So if they want, you know, the nourishment and the protein that's in the meat, they rub it down with ginger and turmeric. Matter of fact, there's no way, you know, they, they make sure these spices are in there because it's so much more accessible and it's so much easier for the body to break down, you know, so they make the stews and they, and they, and they rub them in and they, and they make sure they're stewing in the spices. The curry powder, you know, I love it on avocados, I love it in salad dressings. That alone, I mean, we make a lot of products and we have a huge number of. A great number of skus on our website. The curry powder, I would, you know, I gave it to a friend of mine that was a super athlete as a kid. He came up to about £300. He had all these ailments. He's in his mid-30s, but he's surfing and playing basketball still. But he had like a broken finger playing through it all. You know, it's sprained ankle. And I gave him this curry powder. I'd already given him salves, I'd given him teas, but it just wasn't in his wheelhouse to use those. It wasn't as user friendly. But the curry powder, it's so easy to sprinkle on your foods, whether it be meat, fish, pasta, whatever it is, and you get this ginger, turmeric. And again, people ask, how much do I put on? And the, you know, it's. From my standpoint, my opinion, it's always to flavor. That's how you're going to learn how to use the spices. So even if you just sprinkle it on a little bit, just a little dash, eventually you'll work up to the point where it's totally an inflammatory medicine spice that you're putting in your food and it's shifting your diet. Right. So what do these spices do? Like, this guy that was 300 pounds, he's now down to about 210. I played him, actually. He's the one that gave me my fat lip on the hoop court the other day. But in any case, his name is Johnny. He's about 6, 5, and he's a. He's trimmed down to about 210. And what happened? I gave him this curry spice. He started sprinkling it all over his foods. And his, his blood alcohol, his blood ph shifted, right? Over time. He got about three, four jars. That's it. And as he started sprinkling on his foods, the ph of his blood started shifting from an acidic Pepsi, Coke, white rice diet, and he started eating much more alkaline foods because the, the PH of his blood, once that shifts, you know, like attracts like. So just like, you can't just eat one potato chip, right? You can't just eat one chip. That's great. Well, I'd rather it be I can't just eat, you know, one vegetable. You know, people say, oh, you don't eat meat. It's not about not eating meat. It's about eating more fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. You can, you know, eat what you want to eat, eat what you're attracted to, but make sure you get your nitrogen, your highly oxygenated foods, your hydrating foods. Right? Because that level of hydration is determined not by the amount of water you drink, but about the ratio, the water as it relates to the more harder foods or calcifying foods. Right. So that ratio is key. And if you can attract a higher alkaline diet, that's going to bring in more hydrating foods, then you're going to create more suppleness in your body and you're going to have a finer balance between strength and flexibility that we're all looking for. That curry powder, it's delicious. It brings that next level spice into your kitchen that we are all missing. I mean, that to me, is, is the next level as it relates to riches and wealth. Right. Where are the spices in our kitchen?

Yeah, I agree. It's kind of funny. Like, I felt embarrassed because I actually didn't really realize that curry was a plant that you could get goodness from the leaves, the root, the bark, and the fruit of. I always thought curry was just a blend of specific, like Indian herbs and spices that they put all together and called curry. And then the first time you sent me curry, I looked at the label and I saw that, okay, it's got turmeric and ginger and lime and chili pepper. No. Okay. So he's blending all those things together and calling it curry. I'm like, oh, curry leaf. Oh, it's an actual plant, so it's. It's super interesting. I learned something new every day. And I sometimes wish you lived a lot closer to me, Doug, so I could go walk around the farm and learn even more. And in a little bit, I actually do want to talk a little bit about kind of how we could maybe create our own little farms on our own plots of land, you know, so that I could start sending you some Inland Northwest honey, maybe. But before I do, one other thing I wanted to ask, because I'd be remiss not to ask it, because I walk in the door. I do a lot of long walks during my lunchtime. I take phone calls, but I always come back in all windswept, and, you know, my skin's all cold. And I've been spraying this hydrosol on me. You have, like a comfrey hydrosol and a noni hydrosol, But I've been using this turmeric hydrosol. I think a lot of people aren't really familiar with the word hydrosol or what a hydrosol is, but I spray it all over my face and my hands when I walk in from these cold walks, and I rub my hands together and rub my face, and everything just gets warm again, and I feel refreshed. And, you know, a hydrosol might be a new term for people. So can you explain what something like a tumor hydrosol is and what it does? Yeah.

So we take the fresh plant medicine and we steam distill it. It's a distillation process. So it. It becomes, you know, vaporized, if you will, and then it goes through a cooling process, and we, you know, we get the liquid of the plant. It's actually how they make the oils. So they'll. They'll scrape the oil off that distillation process, and they'll. And they'll bring a concentrated oil to the marketplace. What we do is we keep the water, what they refer to as the spirit water of the plant, along with the oil, and it's blended in this hydrosol. And it's just our medicine from how it's grown is so potent that our hydrosol, to me, is ideally balanced, because plant medicine is all about. It's not just potency, it's gentleness. We want to be able to receive the plant medicine, its most gentle form, so that we can receive the potency over time. We're not always, you know, Sometimes it's just too potent and we're not able to create the longevity that we need to take it over a lifetime. So that hydrosol is the ideal balance between gentle plant medicine and potency. So the turmeric, again, it's going to be, you know, super inflammatory. It's going to build the immune system up from the outside in. It's in a spray bottle. You could drink it if you had like a mouth ailment for sure. It's delicious. But it's a great way. You know, in India, they use turmeric as makeup. Why is that? They have malaria, you know, in the mosquitoes. And the turmeric just creates that immune system. It's that that big orange color that's going to create that second skin they refer to it as. And so you spray it on your body, you got that second skin immune system. You go after the inflammatory zone. Instead of going, taking the turmeric and having go through the digestive tract, like I mentioned before, you're able to address the area of concern directly. So you can spray it because so the concern in so many of these cases, whether it be noni or turmeric or comfrey, you know, it's got to go through the digestive tract. So how do you access it without doing that? Well, the spray bottle makes it super convenient. You know, having in a liquid space, a liquid modality is key. And done with these hydrosols is created that liquid modality. Certainly, if you want to experience the jungle medicine in its freshest way, in its most uplifting way. Those hydrosols are amazing. We have a tulsi hydrosol that again is going to really focus awareness. It's going to help with any kind of antidepressant issues or depression issues some of us may have. We have a noni hydrosol, which again, would be super versatile for any ailments, but also for circulation. And we have a lemongrass that I think is on the website. I'm not sure I use it.

I got to remember to get my hands on more of that for the, like the mosquito season. It's great for keeping the mosquitoes off too. That lemongrass.

Yeah, I use it for my hair. I use all of it in my. On my skin and my hair and my nails. And it's going to really help, you know, lemongrass, things like curry, you mentioned before, and lemongrass. You know, when you go to Southeast Asia, it's in every meal, like three meals a day.

Lemongrass comes out your pores and keeps little, little vampire insects Away kills parasites, you know, kills. Like there's, there's a reason a lot of that stuff is used in a lot of these cultures. And, you know, I, I, I feel like I eat pretty clean pork and I probably don't have as many mosquitoes as they do in India, but, but I use this stuff and it's pretty cool how what you consume can interact, how your environment interacts with you, because you are what you eat ate, and it comes out your pores and it finds its way into your skin and your blood. For better or worse, I'd rather be eating a curried pork chop and some raw ginger honey on a carrot cake than I would a corn dog, that's for sure. One other thing before I ask you about farming, Doug. Remember that, that little berry that you had me try and I put in my mouth and it kind of like cleans your whole mouth. It makes you salivate. It tastes like a whole party in your mouth. It's called spilanthes, the, the electric toothpur. Remember when you showed that one to me and my eyes bugged out and I was like, holy cow, what is this stuff?

Yeah, so we have a patch of splantes. It's, you know, we're a small farm and so we do. It's actually coming up to season, so we'll have abundance of it. We make a buzz chew out of it's it called. And we mix it with moringa. We mix it with moringa.

And I forgot about the buzz chew and you know, I wound up growing spilanthes. I came back, I ordered seeds. Electric toothberry, it's also called. I grew seeds. I kind of quit growing it there might even be a little bit still outside. I don't, I don't know. But, but I was, I was growing it indoors actually, in my office. And, and literally like two weeks ago, I thought I should tell Doug about this because this new study just came out on spoilanthes. It even made me think about growing it more. And they did a study where they were looking at the pharmacological effects of it in humans. They did a pretty big study. It was like 250 dudes that they did this study on where they were giving them little capsules that contained the spilanthes powder. Very, very simple. They were taking the spilanthes powdering up, put it in the capsule, and they found a significant increase in libido in frequency of sexual intercourse and in erection duration in the guys who are using the spilanthines. It was like, and I always thought of it as something like clean the mouth, make you salivate, but apparently it's a big time aphrodisiac and libido enhancer. And dudes and I came across this study just literally a couple weeks ago. I thought, oh, I got to bring that up to Doug when I talk with him.

Yeah, certainly an aphrodisiac. So much of accessing our male or female sexual organs is about, you know, ridding and cleansing and, and detoxing the blockages between our mind and, and body, right? So in order to access, access those sexual organs, we gotta, we gotta defunct our access. So how do we, how do we access our sexual organs? Right, from our, from our mind. And now the spilantes is, is, I mean, if you look at the actual plant itself and we have photos on our website, you'll certainly see the tie in. And what I find with, with the splantes is that defunctness as well as that electrifying nature you felt through your whole body. It's known as the toothache medicine. That is the, that is the stimulating effect that you first find. But, but you do find this electricity that runs through the body and certainly is able to ignite your sexual organs in a, in an amazing, in an amazing way. But again, I, the splentis, I described to people as the defunct, as the, you know, defunct medicine, because that's what it does. And as it defuncts the body, you know, you're able to access those sexual organs and be in touch with them.

It's pretty cool stuff. And I've, I'm just gonna get my hands on some spilanthes now. We'll call it, call it the Viagra Berry.

So we have a tincture and we have Buzz Chew. Those are the two products. We just have some small batches on the farm. They are certainly extremely precious.

Yeah, yeah, I forgot about the Buzz Chew stuff. That's. That stuff is fun. You put a little bit of that in your mouth like a, like a tobacco pouch and holy cow, it's good. It's kind of like people chew on.

Up the cacao. It's almost like, I guess it's the coca, like the same stuff that cocaine would come from. A lot of people mix that up with baking powder to open up the vasculature in the mouth. And they'll put that up against the buccal membrane and the lower lip and absorb it for energy. And that Buzz Chew that you guys make, I think it's more fun because you get this tingly Sensation inside of your mouth. And Doug, I actually wanted to ask you because obviously you're down in there in Kauai and you have this full on plant medicine garden and apothecary operation. And you know, have you ever thought about kind of like teaching people how to do what you do in their own general area? You know, like if I want to take. Because I've got 10 acres, you know, here in Washington, I've got a, I've got another 12 acres. I'm actually thinking about moving to over on the Idaho side. And, you know, and I just love what you've done down there. Do you have any tips for people who might want to create this same type of scenario in their own backyard?

You know, we have some friends that left the farm a couple years ago to start a medicine farm in Idaho.

Oh, really? What, what part of Idaho?

I don't know and I should know. I'm just not familiar.

That's right. That's all right. Maybe you can connect us later. Even though I'm way, way up north.

But yeah, Brad and Dev Jean, I wish I could plug them more at my fingertips. I just don't know the name of their farm right now. But he's a permaculturist and he's brought so much gardening technique to, to our farm. And our people, in any case, they just, they started this, this medicine farm a couple years ago and it's, it's in so much of what they, they brought to Idaho was from Kauai. So again, some people will get a little bit overwhelmed with the, you know, the, the ease of the jungle medicine. The key is, is to harness the medicine all around you. I mean, the Pacific Northwest is flush with, with amazing plant medicine. And, and it's that plant medicine that's going to create the immune system for you to access your local, your true local economy. Right? Because people say, oh, how do I act local? Well, guess what? You don't really know until you start eating the plants around you. Right? You really don't know what to do, where to take your first steps as far as building the local community. Until you start really nourishing yourself with the plant medicine. They give you the information you need to take your steps. They'll, they'll explain, they'll teach you what to do as far as how to create a local community. So again, our ability to transfuse our experience and our information, we are accessible. I believe it to be our Kuleano, which is in Hawaiian, our responsibility to share the education that we've been so fortunate to come upon not just from a standpoint of growing, but also crafting and also teaching how to use. It's very humane. It couldn't be more humane. Meaning once you access the plant medicine, it's so easy to just continue on that journey because we've all been born. It's like gardening. Gardening is not something that necessarily needs to be taught. It just needs to be rediscovered. Right. This is thousands of, thousands of years of backyard gardening and using herbal medicine on the planet as our foundational medicine chest. So we just need to rediscover our pastime in our ancient medicine. And again, these techniques that we're using, we haven't made anything up. Hydrosols and curing herbs and preservation of plant medicine is not our findings by any stretch. We've just used 21st century technology to take it to the next level and also share it as it relates to a podcast like this. So the more we can do these things, I'm happy for people to tap in email, call. I mean, we hope to have a platform in which we can teach people more about, you know, the intellectual property that we've, we've founded Kauai Pharmacy on and, and share that education with the world so that there can be more, more communities founded on plant medicine. Certainly in the Pacific Northwest where you are, there are many healers that are, that are using the foundation of plant medicine to, to spread, you know, their healing attributes. It's all over the Pacific West. It's actually a center for, for plant medicine.

Yeah, it really is. There's some, some great indigenous medicines here. And I just, I, I love it that my son, you know, my sons are taking Kamana. They're, they're going through Kamana, which is a wilderness awareness course. They're about three years into it and they're on the, they're on the five year course for, for this entire Kamana wilderness awareness program. And it's wonderful just to see them out there doing, you know, they do Native American style sit spots for sometimes hours each week and they wander around the forest, you know, in their bare feet, harvesting foods and herbs and berries for meals. And you know, they, they shoot their bow and they, they hunt and now they're raising bees and you know, helping mom build a greenhouse. And you know, I'd much, much rather than be figuring that out versus, you know, Meta and Oculus Rift and crypto investing, which is also all great. But I just think we have to start with our foundation, which is our connection to nature and our connection to Earth. And, you know, it may not seem like, you know, if somebody's going to whip together a smoothie and grab like some coconut meat and some papaya and mango and maybe some of that, that endurance powder that you make, which is great in smoothies pre workout, by the way, or they're maybe going to do some of the curry on a pork chop or, you know, or even like in the bedroom when they're making love, use like ashwagandha and cacao infused into macadamia oil. But, you know, these plants are such a cool part of life and I just, I like how much good you are doing in the analog world, Doug. And I'm proud and I'm grateful to know you and to be connected to the pharmacy. And I swear at some point I'm going to get back down there and after I show my sons the Grand Canyon, I'll try and convince him to come to Kauai after that. But for anybody who's listening in, also, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com food as medicine, I'll link to Doug's Pharmacy. I think we have some discount codes. It's like greenfield 15, something like that, where you can save. Put all that in the show, notes Doug. Anything else you want to share with folks before I let you go?

The modalities that we have on the farm, they're very vast and diverse. As far as the types of products that we have, that's a function of the diversity of our garden. So when we have an abundance of something, we'll come up with a new product. Those modalities, don't get overwhelmed with them. What we've done is we've designed it around the gardens. We've also looked to wrap our medicine chest around people's lifestyles. So when it comes to the acidic, toxic community that's out there, there's gas and Coca Cola and hot dogs at every corner. So what we do is we've tried to wrap a medicine chest around you so that you feel supported, but again, don't get overwhelmed with the amount of products that we have and just really try and integrate what works for you. Because the integration. And again, it's whether it's noni juice that you can get at the local health food store and do a noni soap bath or it's, you know, the capsules or hydrosols that we have on our website, the integration into your lifestyle. And Ben, you did a great job with the honeys and explaining how you utilize them because you are a lifestyle man. And that's what it's all about. It's all about lifestyle and using it on the daily and not waiting till something breaks or something has to get fixed, but rather building that immune system up so strong that your awareness is so in tune with your body that your ability to make the best choices for you on a day to day basis allow for optimal health.

I think that's a perfect place to call it. And I would encourage anybody who's listening in who's got a little superfood money burning a hole in your pocket, go check out Doug's website because this stuff is just fun. It makes eating fun. Not that eating is already fun, but it just, it makes life better. And you know, if you get massages or you want to use the hydrosol or any of the foods or the teas or the tinctures, it's just, it's crazy. It's almost like overwhelming how many different medicines you can find so close to nature and in such a cool and easily accessible and even tasty and edible way. So, Doug, thank you and for all you listening in, thank you again. The Shownotes are going to be@BenGreenFitness.com Food as Medicine I'm Ben Greenfield along with Doug Wolkon signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com I realize I've been saying BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'm slowly working it out of my vernacular. It's now BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outstanding outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be. And just find the Ben Greenfield life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.