Unlocking the Power of Herbs for Gut and Overall Wellness: A Conversation with Bill Rawls, MD

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Bill Rawls, MD, who graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University. He has written extensively on health topics including Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, and chronic immune dysfunction. He's the author of Suffered Long Enough and Unlocking the Lyme, and most recently, The Cellular Wellness Solution: Tap into Your Full Health Potential with the Science-Backed Power of Herbs, which I'm in the middle of reading. Aside from his writing, Dr. Rawls serves as the medical director for Vital Plan, an herbal supplement and wellness company that he co-founded with his daughter, Brayden. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. If you want to get the transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet. Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now onto the show. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Rawls.

Oh, thank you. Pleasure.

Yeah, I'm happy to have you here. So I understand that you have your own story of the illness and healing that moved you from practicing obstetrics to what's now a more holistic practice and a focus on herbs. So can you share about that with us?

You know, I started my journey as a conventional physician, went into OB-GYN because it was more dealing with health and wellness. But at the same time, small town practice at that time required me to be on hospital call every second to third day and every second to third weekend. So if you can imagine, most of my nights on call, I got very little sleep. And then on top of that, balancing family and community. And I just went for 20 years without any sleep at all, hardly. And I crashed and first identified with fibromyalgia because I had all the symptoms. But that's kind of a nowhere diagnosis that really just gets you treatment of symptoms and that's about it. So like a lot of people, I kept searching, finally found that I was carrying the microbes associated with Lyme disease. Now I don't really look at any of those things the same way that other people do. I think most illnesses have a microbe component, and, uh, Lyme disease, yeah, that particular microbe is associated with a lot of other things. So the margins start to blur when you really get into it. But anyway, conventional therapy failed me, antibiotics made me sicker, and I finally turned to herbal therapy. And became certified in holistic medicine over about a 5-year period, got my health back, and I was severely ill. You know, I had gut issues, heart issues, brain issues, neurological issues, everything, and got my health back completely. That's been almost 20 years now. I'm 66 and in great health and really enjoying every minute of it. Now I spend most of my time really preaching that message and trying to get people to listen. Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. Well, I got your book in the mail, The Cellular Wellness Solution. So I've been reading that and enjoying it and love your thinking and approach to herbs. I, I, I know that a lot of our pharmaceutical products are derived from plants and herbs, and of course, since I'm not an MD, I use herbs and nutraceuticals primarily, but can you explain the difference between pharmaceuticals and the herbs themselves?

Sure. Well, yeah, it is true. I think we have this idea that our pharmaceutical scientists are these brilliant people that sit in a lab and, and develop these chemicals that have all these actions in the body. Quite frankly, we're just not that good. Most everything that we use is pulled from nature, but the difference between what we're using in herbal therapy and what might end up being a plant or a plant extract that ends up being made into a drug is that We are using the synergy of the entire plant system of defense and protecting its cells. So it's hundreds of chemicals working in synergy. And typically the things that I use for herbal therapy really don't have drug-like effects. They exert their actions by balancing systems in the body, protecting cells, suppressing microbes, and balancing the microbiome. Whereas most of our drugs actually come from plants that we would define is poisons. Very true. So when you get out on that spectrum, you know, there are a lot of poisonous plants out there. Actually, there are more plants that are good for you and that will help you than poisonous plants, but there are a few that are poisonous. And typically that's where our drugs come from, but it's not the whole plant. It's one chemical that they pull to do a specific targeted action. Whether that's an antibiotic or a heart drug, it all comes from just one specific chemical. So you lose that synergistic system that the plant is using to take care of itself. You don't get that. You just get this targeted potent action plant. Typically then we take that chemical and we manipulate it in various ways to make it more potent. Mm-hmm.

And patentable, right? Well, I guess you can probably pull one chemical and patent it, right?

Yeah. And, and that's the other thing. You can't patent a plant. You can patent a single chemical that's been manipulated in some way. Not to say the drugs are bad. I think there is a very important purpose for every drug, but you have to understand that the drugs are restricted to affecting manifestations of illness. They're good for blocking symptoms or blocking abnormal hormone pathways, but they don't address any causes and they don't affect things at a, in a positive way at the cellular level. So most drugs really don't actually promote healing. They can be important in acute phases of an illness to prevent someone from dying, to block those really bad manifestations, but it's unlikely that the drugs themselves or drugs alone are are actually going to cause someone to heal.

An example of that that I see a lot is that people will take antibiotics that just kill bacteria and then they'll have yeast overgrowth as a result of multiple courses of antibiotics. Whereas an herbal supplement that is antimicrobial tends to have a wide range of effects over both bacteria and yeast and fungi.

Yeah, it's true. You know, all antibiotics come from a natural source. They either come from a bacteria, a plant, or a fungus. And a lot of them come from a fungus. And then they manipulate those chemicals. So sometimes they're far removed from the plant, but there's always an origin. But it's not that organism's system of protecting itself. It's a single chemical. And then they potentiate that chemical to kill a bacteria or a virus or a protozoa or whatever in a very specific way. And because it's so targeted and so limited in its actions, bacteria find ways to get around it pretty rapidly. So we have bacterial resistance, but it, it's not selective. I mean, it kills everything and it tends to kill the fastest growing bacteria the quickest. So antibiotics are best for fast growing acute infections. Like if you develop a, an acute pneumococcal pneumonia, or if you're on a battlefield and someone has a wound that could potentially get infected in the wound, that's an acute infection. Those are fast-growing bacteria. And as we know, antibiotics like penicillin back in World War II and beyond can be life-saving in certain situations. But anytime you're talking about a chronic or prolonged infection of any kind, the problem with antibiotics is the longer you use them, the more you kill your normal flora. And your normal flora are are a very important part of your defense system because they keep those rogue pathogens that we all have in our system from taking over, from flourishing and causing us harm. And you take antibiotics for any more than 10 days and you start to kill off your normal flora enough that these pathogens can start flourishing, which can be a real problem. That's a key element that makes herbal therapy very different. All herbs have antimicrobial properties against viruses, bacteria, protozoa, everything. It's broad spectrum. It affects a lot of different pathogens, but herbs don't destroy normal flora. In fact, there's studies showing that while simultaneously suppressing pathogens, herbs have the effect of actually promoting growth of normal flora. So they balance our microbiome. Which is really cool. There's just nothing else on Earth that can do that for you. Yeah.

Well, we'll come back to that in a little bit, but I wanted to ask you about what a stealth microbiome is and why we should worry about activating it.

There are a lot of names for it. This idea that we have bacteria in our gut, you know, everybody knows that, right? And on our skin and body openings, and we're finding, well, they kind of creep into other areas of the body too. But it turns out that our internal, our internal pathways, our bloodstream, our tissues, it's more like a freeway. Things are constantly coming and going. So bacteria from the gut are constantly trickling across into the bloodstream from our sinuses, from our skin, through all these reservoirs where we have bacteria that are technically outside of us, right? So part of our defense system is barriers. You know, we have skin to keep keep microbes out or keep microbes on the skin and not in the deeper tissues. We have the gut lining to keep the food, that foreign material, and the bacteria that are, are part of it contained inside the gut. So we want to be separate from our bacteria, but things are constantly trickling across, and that's part of our immune system job, is to constantly stay on guard to mop these things up. So it's happening throughout our lives right now as we're talking. They're bacteria that are part of us. They're in our— on our skin and in our gut and other places in our body that are trickling into our bloodstream. And most of the time, if you're healthy, the immune system does a pretty good job of protecting you from those microbes, but also foreign microbes that try to enter your body too. But some of them get through. And this is a really interesting bit of science that is taking place only over the past 5 or 10 years that we're realizing surprising the extent of it that bacteria, viruses, other things get through. They get past our defenses and they enter our cells. They invade our cells. And our cells aren't defenseless. Our cells are part of our immune system. So if a cell is healthy, sometimes it can expel or kill invasive microbes. But another possibility, and this is a defense system that most microbes use very readily is they can just become dormant inside our cells. And studies are showing that healthy people, everybody, we have dormant bacteria inside our red blood cells. We have it throughout different tissues in our body. Our brain has a microbiome. But most of these things, if we're healthy, they're dormant. They stay quiet. We don't know that they're there. But go for 20 years with no sleep and a bad diet and constant stress, and you stress yourselves and you weaken yourselves, and these things activate and they start killing off the cells. You know, they basically use the cells for food, and then they start invading other cells. Well, at that point, the immune system looks at the thing and says, oh no, we've got all these bacteria emerging from these cells, and it starts attacking the cells. That's what autoimmunity is. And it's a key element of most any chronic illness. Where the microbes are emerging, what kinds of things you pick up, have a greater bearing on what chronic illnesses you might end up with than anything else in your life. But if you keep your cells healthy, if you stay healthy through your whole life, that won't happen. It's really important to look at chronic illnesses from that point of view. It's a really big incentive to have good health habits.

Yeah, no, I definitely see a lot of people whose illnesses started with a period of stress that obviously weakened their immune system and started the cascade of poor health.

Yeah, most people I talk to with a chronic illness, it's a perfect storm of factors. And sometimes it's acute, like they were in an automobile accident and end up with a long hospitalization. But a lot of times it was just things adding up and just getting worse over time to allow this reactivation. And then, you know, once that thing starts boiling over, it's hard to settle it back down.

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. Yeah. Are there particular herbs that you'd like using for gut health issues like SIBO or Candida?

I like herbs, but I think that, you know, there are a lot of really great herbs that we can use, or really any herbs are going to help balance the gut microbiome. There's no doubt about that. But I think one of the first things is, let's ask where— what the problem is, you know, what's going on here. And when you look at virtually any gut dysfunction, most of the problem is rooted in slow motility. And that can, can be associated with chronic stress. I had a lot of GI issues when I had so much stress. Also, diet, you know, these processed food diets that are high in carbohydrate and fat slow down motility. When you slow down motility, things get backed up. And you have to think about this thing. We have bacteria throughout our GI tract. We have bacteria in our stomach, not very many, lowest concentration of anywhere in the GI tract, but they're still there. And we have low concentrations of bacteria in our small bowel. Anything we eat is food for bacteria. And if you don't keep things moving, you're going to have bacterial overgrowth. Bacteria grow as long as food is present. So it's really important to keep things moving through our GI tract because we're going to keep growing bacteria and we need to get them on moving on down the track and out. But when things are slow, when you have slow motility, you know, in the stomach, what that manifests as is you don't empty your stomach and And food just sits in there splashing around and it causes reflux. It splashes up into the esophagus, but it's also food for bacteria. And just food sitting in there a long time starts to erode the protective barriers of the stomach. Well, bacteria like H. pylori and others are just sitting there waiting, you know, when that stomach lining starts to erode, they start digging in. And so that's where ulcers come from. So it's not the H. pylori as much as they have the H. pylori as an opportunity. So moving down to the small bowel, SIBO, slow motility. When bacteria grow, they ferment. So you have overgrowth of bacteria and that produces gas. Well, in the small bowel, it can't go back up and it's a long way for it to go all the way down and get out. So it gets stuck. So you get bloating, you get gas. But not only that, that overgrowth of bacteria starts to erode the lining, the protective mucus barrier that protects the cells in the gut. So you start to get leaky gut and other kinds of problems, and it just works its all the way down with irritable bowel syndrome and gut dysfunction and everything else. So the first thing is addressing some of those issues of stress and diet, cutting out those processed foods, a more wholesome diet made of whole foods and fresh vegetables. The right kind of fiber is vegetable fiber, not whole grain fiber. You know, some grains are okay, but like rice is tolerated well by most people, but wheat tends to, if you have this going on, if you've got this irritation of the gut already, wheat just, it really irritates the gut more. So you end up with issues of gluten intolerance and that sort of thing. Moving on to herbs, I mean, we want to reduce the concentration of bacteria, we want to promote help move things move through, and we want to protect the lining of the gut. So 3 herbs that I often use are slippery elm. Slippery elm has a substance called mucilage, and it basically replaces that deficient mucus barrier that's protecting the cells that are, that the gut lining is made of. Really important. Berberine or berberine-containing herbs like goldenseal and coptus and the others. Berberine is exceptionally good. Just exceptionally good for suppressing pathogens in the gut. Certain kinds of garlic preparations that can be good. Ginger, wonderful for calming the stomach and suppressing some of those bacterial overgrowths. So those are just a few herbs. Dandelion is good for promoting liver function, but also it's a, it's a really nice bitter. So Bitter herbs promote motility. So we want to restore that motility. We wanna get that gut moving again, cuz that's the only way we're gonna get better. Bitter herbs like berberine, like dandelion. Another favorite herb is Andrographis. We use Andrographis for a lot of things. It has exceptionally good antiviral properties. It's got some adaptogenic properties, but there was actually a study There've been a couple of studies actually showing that Andrographis works as well as drugs for managing ulcerative colitis. So even far down in the gut, Andrographis is exceptionally good for protecting the liver and promoting bile function flow. So there's just a few herbs that are just really nice herbs to have. There are many others, you know, peppermint, cardamom, others can just slow some of the, calm some some of that cramping and distress that can be associated with it. So all of those things are important.

Okay, thanks. So the dandelion, just curious, is that, I, I don't know that I've ever seen pills of dandelion. Is that used more like a tea or?

You can do it either way. Comes as an extract, but you can also use dandelion teas.

I have heard concerns about certain herbs like oregano and berberine that they're too strong and can impact beneficial microbes. And I've definitely seen clients who've taken many rounds of herbal antimicrobials and ended up depleting certain microbes like Akkermansia muciniphila. Any thoughts on that?

I haven't seen it as much with berberine now. As you know, oregano is an essential oil. Yes, it has some pretty strong properties, but you have to respect that there's a difference between an essential oil like oregano oil and an herb. So what you're getting in an herb is chemicals that the plant is using to protect its cells and balancing chemi— chemical signaling agents and balance its microbiome and protect its cells from various kinds of microbes. So that's what you're getting with an herb, a cell protectant. So what you're getting with an essential oil are chemicals that the plant is producing as a deterrent. So typically you'll find these oils in leaves and stems and little vacuoles that the, that the cell, that the plant walls off. And it does that because they have a lot higher toxicity. So clove essential, any of your essential oils are going to have higher toxicity than herbs that can have similar properties. They have wonderful antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory properties. But what they're there for is to deter insects. So when an insect comes along and starts munching on the leaf, it releases these noxious chemicals and chases the insect away. You know, the plant is not using them to protect its cells particularly. So they do have a higher level of toxicity that must be respected. So you can use certain oils like oil of oregano and little gel caps in the GI tract, but it's a lot stronger than most of your other herbs.

So I find that a lot of my clients are deficient in common minerals like magnesium and potassium and often vitamins too, like vitamin C or the B vitamins, despite having ideal diets in terms of eating organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised meats and eggs, you, or usually more like a paleo-type diet and good amounts of fruits and vegetables. So why would that be?

Well, first of all, any testing you do is, it's going to have issues. It, it's really hard to measure vitamins and minerals very specifically. You, you know, you have to remember that most of these things are inside cells and typically they try to measure them in just the red blood cells, but they're distributed throughout the body. So the only way to get an accurate measurement of that vitamins and minerals is take multiple deep biopsies from tissues throughout the body, which just isn't practical. So when we do a blood test, we're getting an indirect sampling that may or may not be very accurate. I use testing a lot less than most physicians. I tend to listen to the patient, talk to the patient, look at symptoms, look at the profile of the patient, and I put a lot more weight in that than I do testing. We do a lot of testing and all of the testing, it has marginal, uh, accuracy. Yeah. We're, we're highly dependent on testing and some testing is very, very good, but the vast majority of it is not as good as you would hope for.

For the minerals, I, I guess probably for magnesium, I've seen RBC magnesium and then I've seen hair tissue mineral analysis for the magnesium and the potassium.

All of those have their own drawbacks.

Yeah. Yeah. For the vitamin C or the B vitamins, I, these are usually organic acids I'm looking at.

Yeah.

Yeah. So not, not the typical test you'd get at your doctor's, but in terms of, in terms of just deficiencies, whether, whether tested or not, why, why would a, somebody eating a healthy diet still have nutritional deficiencies?

Well, if, if they're not absorbing these substances, you have to get them to cells, correct? So if they're in the diet but they're not being properly processed in the GI tract, then you may have some deficiencies there. And that's why I, I do typically supplement in patients with chronic illness with, you know, vitamins, minerals, et cetera. Healthy people that are eating a really good diet, I don't know that they need it quite as much. There's not very much evidence that it really changes outcomes. But chronic illness, I think having that extra is worthwhile.. But again, it's really hard to get accurate measurements there. That's tough. And you have to define, well, what is a nutrient doing? And a nutrient is basically raw materials that cells use to function. And so when you look at vitamins and minerals, those are cofactors used for different cellular processes or mitochondrial processes. You know, if we're loading in even a lot of supplements, if, if cells have a ready supply of those things, they can only use so much. The first thing I do is try to get good food in people. And as far as any person, I think looking at gut function, which is what you're doing there, is supremely important. Supplementing in early stages, especially to make sure they at least have an opportunity to get everything they need, and kind of going from there. I've done more of that pathway than testing. I, you know, I went through a phase in my practice that I did a lot of testing and found, you know, it, it didn't make as much difference as I thought I might. Sometimes you were, I was just kind of chasing my tail with it.

In your book, you outlined some herbs that you think are great for just maintaining health and restoring vitality, shall we say, for someone who's just maybe a little run down. What, what are those herbs that you think the average person who's in good health should be taking on a daily basis?

Well, there are a lot of different herbs, but over the years I've cultivated my own personal list. And these are herbs that I put in some primary products that I just think, you know, you look at the evidence and you look at the broad spectrum of what they do, they're really valuable for anyone. So one of those herbs is rhodiola. Rhodiola is defined as an adaptogen. So an adaptogen is an herb that has the effect of basically protecting our cells, protecting our systems. So it has this overall balancing restorative effect. It helps balance stress hormones. So it, it's a normalizer. It, it pulls us back into balance from wherever we are. So rhodiola is really good for that. It's been used in athletes to optimize performance. It's known to improve oxygenation of tissues. So it's used when people go to altitude. I've actually used it in skiing in Colorado to reduce my risk of altitude sickness because there's some good data showing that. So rhodiola is a really nice herb. Second to that, reishi mushrooms. So our mushrooms, you know, our herbs are plants, but we kind of threw medicinal mushrooms in with the group because they have similar properties. And reishi mushroom has been studied in Japan. It has some of the most potent anti-cancer chemicals known. It's a good immune modulator. It helps balance our immune system functions. Excellent cell protectant, has some great antiviral properties. Turmeric, everybody's heard of that one, the yellow in curry, and turmeric is really nice as an anti-inflammatory. It has some really wonderful properties for protecting the brain. It reduces inflammation, but unlike a drug like ibuprofen, it actually helps to heal ulcers instead of cause ulcers. And it just really has this wonderful range of protective effects. It has some antimicrobial properties that are really Nice.

I think I read it had action against H. pylori in your book. Is that right?

It has some effects on H. pylori, but a number of other microbes too. So just tell a little story. Our company, we have a product called Joint Care. It has turmeric, boswellia, which is another herb, some really nice things for joints. And I, you know, it's a product that I put together years ago that's helped a lot of people. My dog is now 9. And my dog had, you know, when they get to a certain age, they start developing arthritis and that sort of thing. My last dog started doing that at 7. This dog hasn't, but I thought it's time. We'll go ahead and start giving him. So I gave him a couple of these Joint Care tablets in the morning. He's really vital, but the problem he's been having is his teeth. For several years, his teeth have been terrible. Terrible bad breath, having to have his teeth cleaned every 3 months, bad plaque, all this mess in his teeth. We were really afraid that he was going to lose his teeth. About 6 months ago, I started doing this Joycare for his joints, right? His breath cleared, his teeth cleared, just in, and he has no dental problems now. And it's like, wow. So what it was doing was balancing his whole microbiome, including is gingival microbiome.

When I have clients dealing with diarrhea or loose stool, I always tell them about tributyrin, which is the best absorbed form of butyrate, which is normally made by bacteria fermenting fiber in your colon. Supplemental tributyrin can help slow your motility down and feed the cells lining your colon, firming up stool and helping create an oxygen-free environment in the colon, which helps the butyrate-producing bacteria to survive and multiply. Those bacteria are often wiped out after taking antibiotics, which is why tributyrin is a great accompaniment and follow-up supplement if you have to take antibiotics. My new supplement, Tributyrin Max, has 750 milligrams of tributyrin, which is the highest dose currently available in a capsule. You can find it at tributyrinmax.com— that's T-R-I-B-U-T-Y-R-I-N-M-A-X dot com— and use code INTRO15 for 15% off your first order. Water. Were you opening up the, opening up the capsules and shaking them onto his food or was he eating them whole?

No, I just stuffed 2 capsules down.

Um, interesting.

Right before you eat though, to make sure it all—

Yeah, easier for a dog than a cat.

So he's done exceptionally well with it. So other herbs on my list, uh, Gotu Kola is really good as a brain protectant, has some nice calming properties. We all know need that. Shilajit is an is an herbal from the Himalayas that is plant matter that has been, and it's well known, it's been used for thousands of years, but it's plant matter that's been compressed in the soil with bacteria. So it has substances called humic acid, fulvic acid that are really good for gut healing and helping to balance the gut microbiome.

So that's a nice Before you go past shilajit, let me ask you about that because isn't it one of those that has the California Proposition 65 warning on it?

Yeah. I, I think you do have to be somewhat careful with shilajit because it's collected everywhere and we use a special extract called Primavay that's by a company that they spend a lot of time looking for the purest form of this substance and they do a lot of testing to make sure there are no heavy metals and that sort sort of thing. So yes, buyer beware with that one. You do have to be careful, but if you get good stuff, it's really amazing. And it's not just from the Himalayas. This substance has been used in Alaska, in Canada, a lot of the northern latitudes they find it. Milk thistle, everybody knows that one for protecting your liver. It actually can enhance regeneration of liver cells. And that's really important because one of the reasons our cholesterol goes up and we start having more problems is because we replace our liver cells with fat. And as we're doing that, we lose our ability to manage our blood sugar, to manage our cholesterol, and to process toxins. Really important. So this herb that can regenerate liver cells is really important, or like, you know, it stimulates, it sets up a condition that it protects liver cells so that they can regenerate. Basically, I've been taking it for 15 my cholesterol is better than when I was in my 40s. And so it really has some nice effects, but there are always surprises. I was researching milk thistle the other day and I found that it protects osteocytes, cells that rebuild our bone. So it's actually found to be favorable for post-protecting against postmenopausal osteoporosis. So we, we may pick an herb because it, you know, has this known effect, but then you find out, well, it's protecting cells throughout throughout the body. It doesn't have a specific effect like a drug. So that one's really nice. Hawthorn, really good for the vascular system. I put some of that in there. And pine bark also is very good for the vascular system. So that kind of rounds out everything in the body.

I had heard of the pine bark extract, the, the pycogenol. Is that how you say it?

Pycnogenol is a particular brand of that.

Oh, okay. And, and I'd heard of that for migraines. In particular?

Yes, because it's protecting the vascular system, and we know that migraines do have a vascular component. So that's where the herbs really work well. You know, instead of addressing the symptom, they're addressing the underlying causes, and that's really important if we want to promote wellness instead of just suppressing symptoms.

Tell us about Vital Plan.

Oh, Vital Plan is a company I started about 10 years ago with my daughter, Braden. I was still in my practice then, you know, I had, I had to stop doing obstetrics because I couldn't do the night call anymore. So I started a wellness practice that ended up being kind of like what you would know as a functional medicine practice now. I was using a lot of herbs in the practice. So everything that I was using, I was passing along to patients. I found that I just had a really hard time finding the level of extract, the purity, the potency, and the combinations of herbs because I was by then looking at it differently. So much, so much of Traditional herbology is observational. They didn't have science to see how things are actually working in the body. They just made observations. You take those hundreds of years of observations and you apply that to herbs that might be beneficial, and it works pretty darn well. But where I was going is taking that one step further to say, okay, how is the chemistry of this herb affecting things at the cellular and biochemical level? What were we achieving with it? So it was coming up with different combinations guided by newer science that's come out over the past 20 and 30 years that was helping me make those choices. And a lot of times I just wasn't finding the level of product that I wanted to achieve the goals that I had in front of me. So I found that I could actually have products manufactured and I started doing that, very specific specifications. And that grew into a pretty significant business. And finally, we carried it online to take it to a larger audience. The bigger the company got, that gave me more power to have more and more control over the extracts and manufacturing process and everything else. So we have been growing it ever since. So far with a focus more on chronic illnesses like Lyme disease and things like that, but there's so many applications that apply to every person out there. We're growing much beyond that.

With herbs, there's like a synergy that happens when you bring multiple herbs together versus say taking just one at a time, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, you look at traditional herbal therapy, its formulas, it can be anywhere from 5 to 12 herbs together and you get a synergy. I like the analogy I use is a symphony or orchestra. If you went down and sat down in the audience and you looked up on stage and there was one violin playing, it would be nice, but you put two violins and then add in some other strings and the brass section and everything else, and you suddenly start getting a sound that's much bigger than any individual instrument. And that's the way I think of the herbs working together. They're each contributing in their own way, and you've got this complex defense system of a plant that synergizes with other plants, and nature's really made to work together like that. Then you come up with just this wonderful thing that can do extraordinary things for our health. Your health.

And how can you tell the difference when you're looking at an herb, whether it's a good quality extract or, or if it's just a cheaper version?

Testing. Yeah, that's what it takes. And a lot of companies don't do the level of testing that you need. A, a lot of them do, probably about 50/50. I see a lot of products that I can tell they're not doing testing. And typically you find that if you look on the website or look on the bottle and they've just got a list of herbs under a proprietary blend, that, that's That's a red flag right there. So what that tells me is they're using the lowest grade preparation possible and they're going to put more of the least expensive herb in there than anything else. And they're going to try to wow you with marketing and, and scientific jargon to get you to buy that. To really make it work, you've got to have potent botanical extracts. So the extracts that we use in our products are typically 10 times more concentrated. Concentrated than what you're going to find in average grade products. And you're going to get the potency and purity. We do actually 3 levels of testing. We get a certificate of analysis when we purchase or acquire an extract, which is from the supplier to say, okay, and it costs more to get something that has had a study. But then we take a sample of that and send it to our own labs just to make sure it was really telling the truth. And then we test it during the manufacturing process to make sure that all those herbs are being blended properly. And again, there are other companies that do that level. It's not the industry standard by any means.

Is Vital Plan on Fullscript by any chance?

No, we're not. And there is a reason for that. For the price that we wanted to charge, we had a choice. We can give a better quality product and take less margin, we can do a less, a lower grade product and sell it through Fullscript at 50 to 70% off. You know, we're trying to figure out a way that we can actually do that and maintain the quality. But right now we, we just haven't quite gotten there. We do affiliate programs, but with the quality we're trying to offer, we haven't been able to give it, you know, have the margins to actually make the company work.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand you have to sell a lot to make it, especially to go through them with the whole wholesale. Are you still seeing individuals or—

What I've been doing for the past 5 years is doing consults that I really define as a high-level health coaching because I don't write prescriptions. I don't manage medications per se. I've been doing that, but I'm, I'm taking a break from it right now to build a course that would teach people how to go through all those steps. So I'm taking everything that I've learned and building it into a stepwise course that people would basically learn how to take care of themselves or learn how to recover from a chronic illness. And it would complement anything they're doing with any other provider. But yeah, it's— so that's, that's kind of a labor of love that I'm in the middle of right now to put together something that really takes that 20 years of knowledge and puts it in a form that everybody can use. The book, The Cellular Wellness Solution, is kind of the backbone of it. That will be the handbook. But take people through that process of how you do the detective work for understanding why a person is having symptoms or why they're ill. You know, so often when we start with a patient, we start by focusing on the symptoms because nobody likes to feel bad. Nobody enjoys the symptoms. As a society, as our medical system, we tend to focus more on symptoms than anything else. And how do we get rid of the symptoms? And what I want to know is why did the person become ill in the first place. Because illness doesn't just happen. There's always a reason. If you can define what's going on, why that person became ill, and then you have a pathway to start to reverse those things. So if I can create a course that can help people on that journey, we, we can get more people there and put people on just in a better place for how they think about their bodies.

And if they want to hear about your course when it's ready, where would they find Where can people find you?

Vital Plan. Yeah. And so it'll all be through that. I've probably got another month or two. I've got a lot of other things going on.

Well, by the time this comes out, it may, it may very well be out because this will probably publish in a few months.

Oh, look for it then. Yeah. It may, may already be there.

I signed up for the affiliate program through Vital Plan, so I'll put a link down there to, to Vital Plan. And I noticed on the website that those 5 herbs that you think are like the great— maybe this is like the equivalent of an herbal multivitamin for you.

The multivitamin industry has been so unbelievably successful convincing people that they need to take a multivitamin every day. And, you know, half the population does it and they've been doing it for 70-some years. There's not a lot of evidence though. There's a little bit of evidence that it's a good idea, especially if you have or struggling with some kind of chronic illness, but The power that you get from a multivitamin, eh, pretty scant. It's going to do very little to protect you from the kinds of illnesses that people have. Herbs, there's so much evidence. There's just so much evidence. And I detailed it in the book that it's just, we, you know, it's just overwhelmingly in favor of herbs that yes, every person on the planet would be better if they were taking herbs every day. If every person took that assortment of herbs in a high-grade supplement or risk of chronic illness would go down. I think the rate of cancer would go down. It would do some pretty remarkable things. And I know that because of the scientific evidence, but also just watching in action with thousands and thousands of people over the past decade of how much they've benefited just from these basic assortments of herbs. It's just truly powerful. So yeah, I'm trying to buck the norm and trying to get people to say, yeah, Yeah, if you wanna take that multivitamin, it's fine. It's not gonna hurt you. But if you really wanna protect yourself, take a daily herbal of some kind.

And I noticed that there's a product that has those 5 herbs. It was 5, right? Combined. What's that one called?

You know, because everybody needs a multivitamin and because I couldn't put everything I wanted in a bottle, we typically sell it as a pair. So there's Daily Herbal, which has those 5 herbs, and then there's Daily Multi that has the basic vitamins and minerals. In a form that is best assimilated in the body, which isn't what your typical— what's in most typical multivitamins. But that's where I put the milk thistle and hawthorn and maritime pine bark and lutein for eyes and other kinds of things. So yeah, you, you know, it means taking a few capsules a day, but gosh, you get so much out of it.

Anything, any final thoughts before we sign off?

Well, that's been a lot of information right there, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to folks.

Yeah. Well, thank you for being with us. Yeah.

I encourage people to read my book if they get an opportunity. It's a, it's a big book. Don't be intimidated. It's like 4 books in one.

It's more like a manual.

Yeah. It's like the first book is just looking at health at the cellular level, and everybody's telling me it's easy to read. The second is like an herbal primer to help people understand herbal therapy from a scientific point of view. The third is just all those things that we need to do with diet and lifestyle and everything else. And then the fourth section is applying those principles to specific problems like brain and gut and heart. Yep. So there's a lot of information in there.

Yeah, no, I'm really enjoying it. I, I wouldn't say I get sent a lot of books, but I occasionally get sent books and sometimes I read them, sometimes I don't. But I was immediately pulled in when I started reading about your story and how herbs really just set you back on a path to health. So anyway, I, I'm enjoying it.

Well, I'm very glad to hear that. Thank you.

Okay. Well, thanks so much.

Oh, my pleasure.

I will link to his book, The Cellular Wellness Solution, in the show notes as well as Vital Plan. Thanks for supporting the podcast by using my links. And if you'd like to support the podcast in other ways, you can buy supplements at a discount from my Fullscript dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to eVitamins, which is available worldwide. Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my gut healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.