Matt Kelly explains how plant medicines work differently than simple vitamins. Plant compounds are complex molecules that can act as antioxidants in one tissue, then metabolize into different compounds that bind to brain receptors and produce calming effects.
The plant medicines are more complex molecules. So for example, if you look at vitamin B3 or vitamin B1, they're pretty straightforward little molecules and they go and they do very particular things, usually with enzyme systems in our nervous system and elsewhere. You look at plant molecules and they can be very cumbersome, uh, in a, in a very elegant sort of way. And it's that cumbersome nature of the plant molecules that allows them to get in your body and interact on a couple of different levels. And the herb may go in one part of the body and help to be an antioxidant, but then that same plant molecule, or you may metabolize the plant into a couple of molecules, might go to your brain and actually bind somewhere that kind of calms your brain down, like physically calms your brain down, which is kind of cool.
