432: Sugar Addiction in Women Over 40: Causes, Health Risks, and Natural Remedies with Kita Centella

Sugar has such a devastating effect on our brain, on our whole cardiovascular system, it is.

Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host, Natalie Jill, and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty, and so much more. Hot flashes, sleep disturbances, mood swings, intense sugar cravings. The journey through midlife, as you know, can feel like we are navigating massively unchartered waters. What if I told you that some of the answers to some of our most challenging midlife symptoms can be steeping in your own kitchen? Yep. Maybe in a cup of tea. In a world of quick fixes, pharmaceutical solutions, that might sound hard to believe, but for centuries, some women have turned to plants for healing. Now, before there were any pills for all the problems that we we face, there were plants for every purpose. Today's conversation is with herbalist Kita, who she's going to be revealing with us how ancient plant wisdom is meeting modern women's health. From inflammation to cortisol, brain fog, most importantly, sugar cravings, she's got it all. Thank you so much for being here today, Kita. Can't wait to dive in to this whole conversation.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation.

Now you have formed this incredible company. I'm sipping on it right now. I'm sipping on it right now. But there's a whole backstory to this and how you figured out about herbs and tea. And specifically, can you take us a little bit through your journey? I want people to understand how far you've come and where this even came from.

Oh, my gosh. I have always loved plants all of my life, but when I was young, I believe I had hypoglycemia and nobody knew. And I was addicted to sugar. I was allowed to eat whatever sugar I wanted to eat. This is back in the 60s and 70s, so there's no real guardrails on that. And so I grew up with, like, a constant yeast infection and thrush and skin issues, acne, and. And then later on, you know, in my teenage years, I started becoming addicted to other substances. I started drinking alcohol at 16 and started drugs couple years later, so my life was really out of control.

You were so young. You were so young when you just said that. That's, that's, that's why I think of that. My daughter's 17, so. Boy, that resonates.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I was already like a full blown addict and you know, all of that at a very young, before I was legally allowed to drink.

Wow.

So. So I, I just had a lot of stuff going on. That's a completely different story. But I did not have the coping skills to deal with it. And my body apparently wasn't process properly either. And that'll, you know, kind of play in later. But my life continued to spiral down over the next few years until I found myself in a lot of legal trouble. I was arrested and ended up serving time for. As an accomplice in a drug related offense. And it was in prison that I finally started to get my act together. And it wasn't because of any programs or anything like that. Those are, you know, really super minimal. But.

I met a woman who became a mentor to me and she saw something in me and she was, you know, very spiritual and kind of, kind of like a medicine woman. Even though she didn't use that.

That she was in prison, that you met her. So you met her in prison? Oh, wow.

Yes, I did. And we became very close. She took me under her wing and she started to introduce me to the healing powers of plants. And she also said to me that she thought that I probably had hypoglycemia for most of my life. And she described the symptoms. I had never heard of it before, but she described all the symptoms of, you know, dizziness and shakiness and feeling lightheaded and just really out of balance. And, and that described my whole life. And that, you know, when I would, you know how it is when you get hangry, it's because your blood sugar.

Well, and I do, I do think there is a correlation to, with this, the sugar connection and the. That feeling of needing it and what you just said at addiction. This is not uncommon that you'll hear somebody that struggles with addiction also struggled as a K with sugar.

Absolutely. It's like your, your gateway drug. And it starts so young. And I do want to talk about that a little bit more. How deep our psychological connection is with sugar and why it's so hard to kick. But anyway, when I started to learn about the healing plants, it. It really started to transform my life. And, and so I started becoming healthy. I started learning how to respect my body, I cleaned up. Like, the last time I did any drugs or alcohol was in 1986. So.

I never have gone back to it because I have embraced a whole other way of living. And so I made a commitment to learn about the healing plants and then share what I learned with the world. I had no idea what that was going to look like, but it totally transformed my life. And so I got out of prison in 1992, and I was still, like, really trying to figure out how to. How to live as an adult, because, you know, when I was out before, I had never really hold a job or. And you were a kid when you went in.

I mean, you were really, truly a kid.

In my 20s. Yeah. Early 20s.

That's still very young.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. So I had to really learn how to. To function in the world. And because I had learned about managing my blood sugar, I learned, okay, I need to have snacks with me. I need to have something that's going to keep my blood sugar stable so that I can function and not, you know, flip out during the day. And. And I continued to try to, like, figure out how am I going to learn about these plants. And then a couple of years later, I discovered a. An herbal program, an herbal education program. And it was exactly what I was looking for. So I enrolled, and it, again, it transformed my life. My life has had a series of transformations, and. And I knew that this is. This is for me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes. And so it was, you know, a little longer than a year. It was pretty comprehensive. There was science as well as the herbs. So it wasn't just, you know, drink chamomile for this. It was like.

Right.

We learned a lot about the compounds that are in the herbs. We learned about just how, you know, how to balance them, how. How they interact with our body.

And, you know, I think of supplements, and so many supplements are based on herbs, but people don't tend to know why or. Or the science behind that or how that came to be. But most supplements, if you look ingredients, I mean, that's what you're going to see is a list of things. And. And they are. They are medicine. They are a way to really change and fix things, but they can also hurt us if we're not doing things the right way with them. I've understood exactly.

Yeah.

You brought up about sugar a minute ago. I want to. I want to circle back to that, because sugar is a huge topic, and you said that there is. It goes a lot deeper in there. Share with Us what you learned about that and how that correlates and why this is such a huge epidemic.

Sure. It goes all the way back to evolution when humans were learning how to figure out what, what was food and what wasn't food. And one of the things that we learned as, you know, a species is that the sweet flavor is good. The sweet flavor is food. And so we're hardwired to recognize it as something that's good. So that's just part of our wiring. But our, our ancient ancestors didn't have access to all like. Like right now, over 75% of our packaged foods have added sugar. So our an sisters didn't have access to this kind of sugar that we do now. And what happens to us now in our modern times is that we get. I'm not, I don't want to use the word brainwashed, but we get conditioned as children to associate sugar with our self worth and our self esteem. Like, like, think about this. When you're, when you're at the dinner table, you're a little kid, if you're good, you get ice cream.

Oh, you're right. If you never thought of it that way.

If you're bad, you don't get dessert.

Wow.

So we associate being good with eating sweets and we associate being bad punishment. No sugar.

You're absolutely right. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. And then I think about, you know, a lot of us in midlife. We grew up, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s. I mean, 70s was big with the, the sugar cereals. I mean, I remember having, I remember having cereal and porn. Pouring sugar on top of the sugar cereal.

Yes.

I remember having strawberries and dipping them in sugar and even making my own cinnamon toast. Sugar bread. Like mixing cinnamon and sugar. It was like it was part of our. For breakfast even.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were, we were well, like we were well above the 25 grams that we should be eating after about like a half a bowl of cereal.

Yeah.

And that's just, that's just a couple of bites. You know, we're, that's not including what we're gonna eat and drink for the rest of the day.

So how many people do you think struggle with hypoglycemia? And do you think that is a big culprit or do you think it's just in general we're having too much? And it could be even creating that? What are your feelings on that? And I know you're not a doctor, but I just. What's your experience? Knowing that you walk through that yourself. And when you look back now at your childhood or kids, or even women in midlife, like, what are your thoughts around sugar and what's happening there?

Just based on my own experience, something like hypoglycemia, it is not like, not everybody has it. So it can be a genetic tendency. I know that it's something that's pretty common in my family. Just like diabetes can be part of your family genetics, a tendency toward it. But the lifestyle factors are like, they're going to artificially jack up and crash your blood sugar all day long based on what we're eating. So we're going to create states of hypoglycemia just by eating a sweet breakfast.

And just so you all know, if you were, if you eat or you give your kids mostly starchy sugar meal, what happens, especially if you don't have protein or fat with it or you make it worse, you add high fructose corn syrup or condensed sugar, lots of sugar. What happens is your body starts to secrete insulin to counter that. And your body plays this game with each other, like, okay, what sugar is in blood now let's release insulin now let's. Now we need more. So it goes in this up and down cycle where you start craving more, which is why if you eat gummy bears or just pasta, for example, even you might be hungry an hour later wanting more sweets or more carbs. Where if you were just to eat protein, for example, and fiber and fat, you wouldn't have that, you'd be full a lot earlier. And it's because of your body and your brain playing with this.

Exactly, exactly. It's such a roller coaster. And because we're not taught about this and we're just given sugar all of our lives.

By the time you hit midlife and your estrogen levels and your progesterone levels decline, you start to feel the effects of a lifetime of high sugar consumption.

Now, the other thing that I understand that happens is when you are not feeling good in your own skin. So this is like you're either depressed or hormone swings and this happened probably did you as a teenager. And then it happens again in perimenopause and midlife women. When we're not feeling good, our body is searching. Our brain is searching for serotonin, it's searching for dopamine, it's searching for things. And sugar gives you that instant fix is so. So we start craving it even more.

It does it. Yeah, it's. It's as addictive as cocaine because it hits those Same, the same brain chemicals.

So, okay, explain that a little more because we've heard that, we've seen the meme. But explain how that seems so extreme like to say sugar is as addictive as cocain.

It is, but the, the reward part of the, the reward chemicals like dopamine or something, it is triggered by cocaine and it's triggered by sugar. Yeah. And so we get addicted to that feeling of reward.

So when we tell somebody, just don't have sugar, what goes wrong?

What goes wrong is, especially if you have those deep psychological and emotional connections to.

Stirs up this feeling of like, no, you can't take that away from me. You can't punish me. I'm not bad. You can't touch that. So we get really defensive and that's what makes it super hard for people to give it up, even though they know that they need to. Yeah.

And then we get mad at ourselves. It's more self beat up, like, what's wrong with me? I can't control. Why am I craving this? But when Keita says that, I want any of you listening that are struggling with sugar, when she says it's as addictive as cocaine, just think about that for a minute. You would not tell a drug addict, just don't do it. Or maybe some of you would, but I don't advise that. There's a lot more to that. Like there's some work to be done to get that, to get them to not crave that, to not need that. It's not as simple as just don't do it. So when we tell somebody, just don't have sugar, that's asking a lot.

It is asking a lot. I mean, your doctor might be the one telling you just not drink sugar though, because, you know, for, you know, if you want to live, if you don't want to get Alzheimer's or heart disease or any of the other things that are looming in front of you, then you've got to take it seriously. But there's also all that psychological stuff that you have to get through. I don't know if I told you this before, but I'm writing a book on how to, how to become sugar proof for life, so.

Good. I can't wait to read that one. We need, we all, we all need that.

Yeah.

And just can we, before we get into like how and represent, I have a lot of questions for you. I want to ask about cortisol. There's so many things I want to ask you about with herbs, but when you say become sugar proof for Life. Can you just run down some of the reasons we don't want sugar in our life? Like, what is the problem? Because some people go, well, it's just sugar. Everything's bad for us. What are the problems that you see that come up with if we do not take this seriously?

Well, you're probably familiar with the study done by the American Heart association that did extensive research on the causes of heart disease, brain diseases, and all that stuff. And they came to a very groundbreaking conclusion that it wasn't fat like we had been told it was sugar. Sugar has such a devastating effect on our brain, on our whole cardiovascular system. It is pro inflammatory. It. You know, I know, I know. We talk a lot about gut health. You mention it on your podcast a lot. But it has a very negative effect on your gut health. Just about every system and function of your body is negatively impacted by high sugar diets. And by high sugar diets. That's more than 25 grams of sugar a day for women. And that is not the amount of sugar that you're trying to shoot for. That's your. That's your maximum ceiling. So one of the things that does not get talked about enough regarding diet is to start retraining our palate to appreciate foods that are not sweet, heavily, heavily processed, heavily flavored and stuff like that. Like, if we're so you. You know, people don't want to drink their tea unsweetened because they're just not used to it. But once you are off of sugar for long enough, your palate will refine you. You. You will stop craving it. This happened to me with dark chocolate. I used to eat milk chocolate, and I didn't like dark chocolate because dark chocolate's bitter. And then I watched the movie Chocolate. Did you see it?

No.

Oh, it's a wonderful movie with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She's a chocolatier in France. And I watched her movie and I just. I related to her character a lot. You know, she's a single mom with a store. So I started making myself eat dark chocolate. And at first I didn't like it, but I didn't go back to the milk chocolate. And for me, like, my taste buds will change within five days. Five days to a week. Other people, it can take 30 days.

Wow. I've seen that happen even with things like berries. When people clean up their sugar habit all of a sudden where they weren't thinking berries for dessert or berries or they become very sweet tasting to them.

They are now that you're not Having things that are like so sweet. So it is important to just know that there's going to be a period of time when your palate is readjusting to things that aren't intensely sweet. And then you'll also start to develop an appreciation for other flavors like, like wine tasting, tea tasting. You start to learn all these other nuances and appreciate things that you didn't, you couldn't even taste before you all.

I just want you to realize when you pick up one of those sodas there's more than 25 grams of sugar in that like a lot more. So with this piece of cake bowl of ice cream. So just when you're she's saying 25 grams a day. I just want you to understand like we're getting that in a half a drink some people or in your morning coffee which I call candy. Now people do dump the sugar in, in the morning. So this is a, this is a serious topic here and it is important now not is familiar with that study Kita so I want to just talk a little bit more on that. So for years and years and years we were told fat is what causes heart disease. That dietary fat. That is not what the studies show. Now what we're seeing is that high sugar consumption, high blood sugar is what's leading to a number of diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes to heart disease to dementia, Alzheimer's, all of this related to high blood sugars. Now if you're wondering if this is something you're navigating just getting routine blood work just by the, by the way, if you have check your A1C it's your blood sugar over a three month period and right there you can see if you've got an issue there. If we're in the high fives, six, seven, we've got a problem. We've got a definite problem. Even if you're in the mid fives I. It's kind of a red flag like let's, let's look at getting this down so your A1C can show that. And then when you see people wearing even continual glucose monitors, that little white thing on their arm, that's what they're checking is, is for blood sugar. So, so sugar is the and I think it'll get come out more especially with the current administration more about the dangers of sugar. But I think we've avoided this topic for too long. Can you just touch on the differences in sugar? Because high fructose corn syrup for example is very different than even just table sugar or fructose that's in fruit. Could you just share a little bit about that? And where. Where do you, like, draw the line on avoiding? Like, do you have fruit?

Do you.

What are your feelings on that whole. All right.

Whole, fresh, unprocessed fruit is awesome. So eat it, Eat it. It's great. I wouldn't eat it at bedtime if you tend to spike your blood sugar, so.

Or if you even bananas and pineapple. She's saying whole, fresh fruit is fine.

Yep. Yes. Dried fruit is super concentrated in sugar and it's missing the water, so that's not fine. But anything else, whether it's honey, like raw honey scooped right out of the hive, or, you know, any kind of sugar at all, it's to spike your blood sugar when you eat it. It might do. You know, some might do it a.

Little more slowly and some have. So. And I will say, like, some have medicinal benefits. So, like, if you are going to have a little bit of sugar and you choose like Manuka honey or something, you're going to at least get some benefit where you're not going to get that from just table sugar or pure high fructose corn syrup. Right.

And if you use it medicinally.

Yes.

Now that. That's where, you know, it's kind of like the same as people do with medical marijuana and all that stuff. They're not using it medicinally, they're using it recreationally. So. So like Manuka honey, if you're eating it like a medicine, you're not going to be eating. Like, you're not going to be putting on your.

Exactly.

And putting it all in your smoothie and all that stuff.

You're going to have a tiny bit.

You're going to have a tiny bit therapeutically. Yeah.

Now, do you do. What's your strict avoid list? Do you strictly avoid high fructose corn sample?

I imagine I strictly avoid. Me personally, I strictly avoid anything with added sugar.

Anything. Got it. What are your thoughts on artificial? Like. Like doing things. Not even for. I know you're against artificial sweeteners, but like a stevia or a monk fruit.

Do you.

What do you feel about that?

I. I feel like you need to stay away from it and. And I'll. I'll tell you why and then I want to tell you a little. Well, yeah, we'll. We'll just keep talking.

Yeah, I know. I want to know why this is important. This is. I think we need to hear all the sides of this. Because people ask.

Yes. So, yeah, because a lot of, like, stevia has been Touted to be the good guy. But when, when you consume an artificial sugar any whether it's made from a plant or made in a factory, it is like your, your taste buds are perceiving the sweet flavor. It's sending that signal to your brain, oh, glucose is on the way. So it's expecting glucose in your bloodstream and then that bloodstream or that sugar is never delivered.

Yeah.

And so that increases your cravings.

That's right. Yep.

So you're going to want more.

So we originally we, we saw this right away with aspartame and saccharin and things like that. But people put stevia and all those into the natural category, monk fruit. But it still is going to do that. So are sensitive. You gotta be really aware of that. You have to be really aware of that. You know what's interesting to Kita, sometimes they, you know, people will try the sugar free candies even like that look more natural. They. And, and if you wear a continual glucose monitor, you'll see it's still spiking your blood sugar. So it's very interesting. So it's still in the effect.

And, and a lot like erythritol has that just came out to be like shown to. What is it potentiate blood clots or.

Something like that too?

Oh, all, all of these hurt your gut. Yeah, yeah. So the thing is that we are so habituated to the sweet flavor.

We are.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

How do we stop that? Talk to us about herbs here. Like how do we. Because you came up with something and this is just one of your, your amazing miracles that you learned about and created. But what, how do we stop the sugar craving? Like what, what, what do we do other than strict avoidance? Because we all, we're like, okay, we need a strict avoid, but that's willpower.

Well, there is a remarkable herb that I learned about in herb school. It comes from India. The name of the herb is Gymnema sylvestri.

How do you say that? How do you. Okay.

No G Y M N E M A.

Okay. And it comes from India. And how does that work?

From India? The way it works is the leaves contain a compound called gymnemic acid which when you hold it in your mouth, it. Those that little molecule is similar in shape to the sugar molecule. So it binds to the sugar receptors on your tongue, but also in your small intestine where we also have sugar receptors.

Okay.

And so that's temporarily going to. In your tongue. It's going to block your perception of the sweet flavor. And in Your digestive tract, it may help to, like, block some of the absorption of dietary sugars.

Wait, so it helps you not only. Okay, so wait, I want to make sure I understand that. So it makes you not receptive to the taste of sweet and it blocks you absorbing it.

Yes, your absorption, it's going to block some of it. It's not like it's not going to block all of it. Especially, like, the amount that you're consuming. It's not going to be a lot, but it is going to help. But on your tongue is where, like, this is where it's going to be most impactful. Because when you consume, like, a tea that contains the herb gymnema and you swish it around in your mouth before you swallow, after you've consumed, like, three quarters to a full cup of that.

Okay.

Then you eat something sweet. Like you eat a cookie. You eat some. A chocolate bar or something. It's. A chocolate bar is going to taste like a bar of wax. Whoa.

Okay, so. Okay. To. Me and my husband experimented wrong with this, but now I know. Okay, so, okay, so as soon as we. I got your teas, we got the cortisol one and the. The sugar one, and I reached for the cortisol right away, which I'll talk about my experience in a few minutes on that one, but it definitely calms you. But he grabbed. Grab the sugar one because his big thing was every night either having some ice cream or having. His big thing was Nutella. Like, he loves to have that sweet. So he's like, I'm gonna do this. So he would steep it and drink it, and then he didn't have sugar. But I was asking. I'm like, does it make you not want the sugar? He's like, well, I haven't had it. But now, if I'm hearing you correctly, we almost should try it, because it's saying it's not gonna taste the same.

Right. It's just like. It's not like I've seen a lot of people, like, just try to eat it afterwards. Just try it just to see how it works. But.

I don't know the exact science of how this works, but it is believed to also send a signal to your brain that you don't want sugar, which is really different than those sugar substitutes, which is telling you that you do want sugar.

Yeah. And you're having, like, a cheap substitute instead. You're like, wait, this isn't the real thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't give me what you said, so.

Well, I'll Tell you, Brooks tried the sugar, tried the one for sugar and he has not had sugar, but we haven't tried the sugar after. But he said he just didn't want it after. So I think there's definitely something.

Yeah. Yeah.

I would imagine the best time to do something like that then is like just whenever your body is naturally craving sugar. So like if you're a three in the afternoon person or whatever it is that you're craving it, nighttime is when to do something like that, I would.

Imagine exactly before those danger times when you're typically craving sweets. And that means that you've got. If you're not really sure and you kind of snack on it all day, it means that you have to start paying attention. And that's something that I, I really hope that, you know, I can kind of convey this message how important it is to attention to your body and pay attention to what you're doing. Because a lot of the trouble that we get ourselves into is that we're just not paying attention. We're not really sensitive to how our body is responding to things. So pay attention to when your cravings hit and that if you know that like you always want a Starbucks on the way to work or you always want to, you know when you're watching Netflix at night and you want to have a bowl of ice cream.

Yep.

That you want to drink it before that time. And you know, when my kids were little and they would. One of my daughters had a wicked sweet tooth and I said, okay, you can have all that you want. You have to have the gymnema first. Get all mad.

That's funny. Well, but ladies, listen, if you, especially those of you waking up at three in the morning, which is definitely something I had navigated that waking up at three in the morning, one of the. There's a lot of reasons that could be happening, but the most common reason that happens is because we're having too high of sugar and starch before bed or later in the day. And your body is then d. It's going to then get too low blood sugar as a rebound around 3 in the morning. And your body will start producing cortisol to wake you up to raise your blood sugar, because cortisol will spike your blood sugar. So another reason to be looking at this herb and getting off of sugar is because if we are waking up at that 3am that will prevent that from happening.

Yeah, yeah. It's just going to help you be more stable. And that tea that, that I sent you guys has other herbs in it, and one of the herbs in there is cinnamon. And cinnamon has been shown to help to keep your blood sugar stable.

So it actually helps lower it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or at least stabilize it.

Uhhuh.

Yeah.

Because that's where that makes sense. So is there any contraindications to that herb? Like is there anyone that should not take that or is there any negative side effects that someone would have from.

Something like that that you know, there's always negative side effects to things. There's not enough research on children.

You know, under under 12 or like pregnant women and nursing women. So we always recommend to, you know, wait till after your baby's born and weaned before you have it. Don't give it to little kids just because there's not enough research, you know, to establish the safety. I, I mean I, I gave it to my kids in small amounts, but. Yeah, yeah, but I'm not recommending that people do that, know, until the science is there saying yes, it's totally fine. The herb itself, according to the American Herbal Products association, it's classified as Class 1, generally regarded as safe, which means it's safe when used appropriately. However, if you are taking blood sugar.

Lowering medications like metformin or something like that.

Yeah. If you're taking something that's already lowering your blood sugar and then you're going to drink a tea that may do the same, you might have, your blood sugar might become dangerously low. Low. Yeah.

So, so if you're taking, if you're on glp, ones like the weight loss drug, which is. Will lower, or if you're on metformin, this is not ideally something to add in. If that's you, if you're not on those things and you are wanting to stop sugar cravings, this would be more for you. That makes sense.

Yes. And also like if you have a pre existing condition, like a liver condition or something like that, then you know, go proceed with caution. But then you know, because the herb is non toxic and it's generally regarded as safe.

Bacon is not a safe thing to eat on a regular basis. You know, beer, just look at all the things that people are eating on a regular basis. And you know, and yet they're, they're freaking out because a plant like one person 30 years ago had this problem. So you know, you got to really look at it in context of what's realistic. If you're on medication or under a doctor's care, make sure to talk to them before you use it. They might caution you against it. Or if they're you know, if you're on a, you know, a diabetes. Diabetes medication, you may be able to work with them to lower your. Your dose.

But you know what I love about you? You're giving us all the. Like, okay, you care so much, and I can tell because you're giving everybody all the possible. You're doing more in two minutes about the. Just, hey, listen to your body than pharmaceutical companies ever do on their big, long. Like, if you guys look at any pharmaceutical you're taking, there's pages and pages of that no one even reads. They're like, well, the FDA approved it. I'll just take it. But it's.

I.

So I love that you're. You're rattling these off, but chances are, y', all, most of you are not gonna have any issue from this herb, right? Okay, what about. Why would someone.

Why.

Go ahead. First of all, where do you get this herb? Can people just get it? Should they. Should they make their own tea with it? Why would they? Or why is it better to go get it in? Why is it better a tea than a supplement? Help us with that. And by the way, spoiler alert. Kita has an amazing tea company. We're gonna talk about where she makes all this package. But I wanted to understand, like, can you even. Can people even do this on their own own? Can they get that herb?

Okay. All right. So you can probably get it on your own. It's. We've had the hardest time getting it, just getting a steady supply of it, and I don't. Something might be affecting the crop, but also supplement companies use it, so they buy it all up and then they powder it to use in their extracts.

And stuff makes sense.

So it's not super easy to find. But the other thing is that it. If you don't know how to mix it into a tea, right. It. It tastes terrible. Like. Oh, it tastes like.

It tastes like.

Okay. Really? Yeah.

It does not taste good.

No, it does not taste good on its own. So. So that when. When I blended the tea that it's in. The tea is called sugar proof, and when I blended it, I. I had to keep tweaking it and tweaking it, tweak it to make sure that it's. It works. You got to get all the benefits of it, but that you don't taste it.

Yeah.

Because if so. Yeah. Yeah.

So we don't want to take it. And then what happens when you take an herb and you just stuff it in a supplement? Are we getting the same benefits or how? Because I know like with your tea, we got to steep it. 20 does that. What's the comparison there?

Okay, so, well, I'll tell you why, why I recommend steeping that particular tea for 20 minutes. But in general, with the, the herb gymnema, if you're not drinking it, tasting it, ingesting it, chewing on it, just however, you're not going to get that sugar blocking effect on your tongue.

Explain that when you told. I didn't really understand that, that your tongue has receptors. So how does that work with your tongue?

Tongue, yeah. So our tongue. Well, just, you know, with the gymnema alone and you, you know, it's filling in your sugar receptors, so, so that you can't tempt it, you know, lasts about 20 minutes or so, but you, you won't be able to taste the sweet flavor and that's long enough to get past a craving. But for other things, our tongues are like, we have all these ner, these little nerves and sensors that go right to our brain and it's giving our brain lots of information. Like our.

All the chemicals and compounds that are in plants, they are providing information to our bodies. Sometimes the information is in the form of like a signal. Like, all right, like the bitter compound, something that's bitter. People hate the bitter flavor, but it does so much good for your entire digestive whole cascade. And I'll use that as the example. When your tongue perceives the bitter flavor, it sends a signal to every part of your digestive tract to start secreting digestive fluids. So you're going to start to secrete saliva, which is, you got the enzymes to break down your food. Your stomach is going to secrete all the digestive juices. Your pancreas, your liver, your gallbladder, it's all going to be secreting so that when you eat, if you take something bitter, about 15 to 30 minutes before you eat, your digestion is primed and ready to really extract the nutrients from your food in a much more like, powerful way than if you don't use something like that. Like if you have a bitter green salad and then you drown it in ranch, you're gonna be losing out on that, on that benefit. But if you taste it, you know, like a bitter green salad with a, like a light vinaigrette or something, then you're going to get that benefit. Or if you drink, drink some tea that has a little bit of bitterness before your meal, you're going to get that benefit. But there's other, other things too, like certain herbs that have a sedative Effect. It's. You're. You're getting information that's telling your body, all right, it's time to relax. Now.

Is that what's going on in the cortisol one?

There's a couple of different things that are going on with the cortisol. We blended two types of herbs. Well, the daytime and the nighttime are. Are two different ones. And. Well, let's talk.

Let's talk about cortisol for a minute. So explain to me why. Why cortisol became important to address. I mean, I know. I think I understand the whole cortisol sugar connection, but if you could help with listeners, like, what is the connection there? And why was addressing cortisol important for you to figure out?

Well, cortisol is really important because in midlife, not only are our estrogen and progesterone getting all, you know, nothing is working as it used to because our hormone levels are declining, but also our cortisone cycle is changing too, which is going to affect our sleep. It affects gut, it can. It can exacerbate the effects of a high sugar diet. So. And just stress, stress, stress.

So cortisol is a hormone. And cortisol in healthy pre menop. Pre perimenopause, ideally, it should rise in the morning, it should wake us up, and it should slowly decrease during the day. And then we start producing melatonin. We fall asleep. That's how cortisol should work. And cortisol should spike. If we were to go back hundreds of years in danger or in urgency or in times of stress. So it would be maybe once a day or once a week. It was not an ongoing thing in modern world, with all of the electronics and emails and just everything happening, we tend to spike all day long, like constantly. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Yeah.

And when we are spiking cortisol all day long, we are in a heightened state of stress, which will lead to increased belly fat, will start affecting our, Our mood, our energy, our sleep, all types of things. And can lead to disease, too.

Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Because it lowers your immune function. So both sugar and stress are gonna negatively impact your immune function, like, very seriously. So things like cancer and all the other diseases can.

Really have a much more devastating effect on our body if we don't get it under control.

So what happens is many of us hear stress kills. I mean, me included in this. Like, hey, Natalie, gotta get your cortisol under control.

But.

But what then goes to our heads, a lot of us is, oh, well, you must meditate. But and some of us can't. Some of us, like, really struggle with that. So what help us here, because what we'll hear is either pharmaceuticals, which many of us don't wanna do that. How to. How do herbs help with this and what herbs specifically?

Okay, before I jump into that, I just wanna say something about stress too. Is like, there's a lot of people that, that. That have. That say, well, I don't feel stressed at all. Like, my life is great. My life is calm. It's not just emotional stress. It's heat stress. It's, you know, you go outside and it's, you know, 10 below zero. That's stress. If, you know, I live in Arizona, you live in Arizona, you go outside in the summertime. That's stress.

Yep. Oh, yeah. Every day.

Yeah. If you. If you work out improperly, like you. You overstress your body by working out. That's stressful. Yes.

Yep. And. Oh, this is a key one because that's, That's. I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of women with the weight gain and midlife changes, they think I just need to work out harder. I need to work out more intense. And the harder and more intensely work out. We're creating oxidative stress and we are also raising cortisol there.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, everything has to change in midlife. But what. We created two teas for cortisol. And I'll talk about the two different ones. Let's talk about the one that you left, like the evening one.

Yep.

It is a. It's a blend of three herbs that are nervines. Nervines are herbs that are.

That. That they nourish and relax your nervous system.

So what do you mean ner. Nes, like any rve. Nerve or something.

Any rv. It's a. Like herbs, the. The way they behave, they're. They're categorized in certain ways based on their action. There's nerve beans, there's bitters, there's aromatics. Aromatics are, you know, if you see an herb that says it's an aromatic and you're an herbalist, you're going to infer that it's going to help to reduce gas in your digestive.

Got it. Okay.

Okay. So.

Okay.

And nervines, like, there's. There's different types of nervines who. They're stimulating nervines like, like caffeine.

Okay.

But.

So there's different spectrums, whether they raise you up or bring you down.

So we use a relaxing Nervine and a nourishing nervine. And you're going to feel the effects of this a little quicker. Like it's going to help you to feel the effects, the benefits of it. And then we also added an herb that's an adaptogen, which is, it's a very specific type of herb that helps to protect your body against the negative effects of stress. That herb is called ashwagandha and that's been in the press a lot. You've probably heard of it, right?

Yes. Okay, let me back up a minute because I want to make sure we're all following here. You just said adaptogen. What does adaptogen mean? Many people use that word, but a lot of people don't know what that means. What is that first of all? And then I'm going to ask about ashw. Ashwagandha.

Okay. So adaptogens were first discovered in Siberia where there you may have heard of Siberian ginseng. Yep. It's. Its proper name is Eleuthero, Eleutherococcus centicosis. And it was heavily researched and they discovered that it has a unique ability to protect your body against the negative effects of stress. They did this massive study throughout Europe, like thousands and thousands of people and they, they concluded that all types of stress, their body, it protected their body against. Wow. So you know, whether it's weather, whether it's hard working conditions, whether it's emotional stress, they were just overall all protected. Okay. And there aren't a lot of herbs that are classified as a nervine because they have to meet a few different criteria, such as it has to be very safe and non toxic when used in normal doses. It has to have a non specific beneficial effect on your body. So it's like some herbs are just going to target your digestive system, but adaptogens tend to have an overall beneficial effect.

Okay. It just seems like a lot of supplements these days it just says adaptogen and like people are like, what does that even mean? So that's why.

Yeah, so that's what it means. It's protecting your body against stress. And so to, in order for it to qualify as an adaptogen, it has to meet those criteria. And Ashwagandha is one of those herbs that is like that. And so they have studied ashwagandha and found that when you use it regularly for like 60 days or so, know that it can lower your cortisol by 28 to 30%.

That's pretty significant.

It's significant, but because it, you, you may not feel the effects of it right away, if your body's really sensitive, you may feel it.

I feel everything. I mean, I feel everything. So that's why. Probably why when I had your. The tea, I was like, right away, I was like, oh, wow, that really does calm you. So the, so the.

When you're the nervines, you're feeling, you're feeling the effect of those because you're, you're going to get that nerve nourishment right away. Like that contains an herb called skullcap and skull cap. Okay. Even, like, if you think about the name of it, you know, it's named for the flower. Just the shape of it look like a, like a monk's cowl kind of, but.

Has this effect on your nerves that it is calming. It eases like, like when you're tense and stressed like that your nerves are jangling and you're jumpy. Like, you know, if a door slams and you're just jumping. So it, it helps to just, just release all that tension.

I would imagine it would help too, for people that are relying on things like Xanax or like, like for anxiety. I would imagine this is an option too, because it, it was a pretty. It's a pretty instant. The reason it pretty instantly calms, too, is it partly because the way that it's served in a tea. So the tongue receptor thing, is that also part of it versus a pill?

It is, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Yes, it, it, it is more immediate in its effect. And then there's another herb in there called oat straw, which. It's. It's the same plant that. But we're using the grass instead of the, the part that makes the grain. And that is. It's. It's a nourishing nervine. It's not like a relaxing one. It's more like it nourishes your nerves. There's been studies that show that it might increase GABA in the brain.

Yeah, Gaba is the feel good in your brain. It's a feel good in your brain. So.

Yeah, well, skull cap as well. But there, there's promise that that is. That's one of the ways that it's helping. And so people use it for things like depression, stress, but it's very fortifying. And, you know, in herb school, I also learned that it has a fortifying effect on the myelin sheath of your nerves. And the myelin sheath is that it's like with an electrical wire, there's a layer of insulation around it. And the myelin sheath is like the Insulator around the nerves.

Okay, I have a question before I get too far, because this is. Gosh, I'm such a curious person, and I, I interview so many people about different methods, and I find myself getting confused. So I can only imagine how my audience might feel sometimes. Sometimes we get confused on, like, is it. Is it a supplement? Is it just food? Is it herbs? Is it, like, is it peptides? Like, there's so many different directions to go. Can you give me just a little bit? And I'm going to ask you deeper on some of the herb questions. But how does, like, you or other herbalists, what is their thought process on herbs instead of like, pharmaceutical or strict. Like, help us understand that? Because, like, like, I. We could talk to our mutual friend Allison. She was trained homeopathy. Right. That's like one way. Then you got some people trained pharmaceutical, some people trained herbs. Some people. There's so many different routes. Can you just tell me, like, the thought process on. On our herbalist?

Yeah, and I can't really speak for any other herbalist, just, you know, because every. Yeah, everybody's got their own, their own approach and understanding. But my understanding is this, that if you, if you have to be on a critical medication such as, you know, you had your thyroid removed, you have to be on thyroid medication, there's no herb that's going to substitute that totally. If, you know, if you, if you're.

Or insulin for diet, you're a type 1 diabetic, you need insulin. Yes.

You have to have that. If you, you know, like, you've had heart surgery, you know, you. There's critical medication that just, you're not going to substitute that with the plant. So, so don't even, don't even try to do that. Just, you know, take, take the, the advantages of modern medicine and, and use that. And the, the thing that. Yes. Herbs can't substitute for certain things. Like, you know, a probiotic. I had a, a woman message me on social media about what tea can I take instead of a probiotic?

It's like, you can't. Right.

There may be probiotics in the tea, but probiotics are like billions for sure. Little beneficial bacteria. You're not going to get billions in a cup of tea. You're going to get a few.

We're not even going to get that from a fermented food. Yeah. So we have to do something there. Yeah.

Right. But the difference is that with the teas, with the herbal teas, these, you're getting benefits that you're not going to get anywhere else, you're getting advantages that you're not going to get with anything else. Especially when it comes to certain things where like some herbs are like just so profoundly effective, like, you know, like nourishing your nervous system. Okay. There's, you know, foods that have tryptophan in there and stuff, they're going to help. But if you drink a tea like that, cortisol evening tea, you're not going to find those compounds pounds in your food.

So I'm just starting to learn about herbs from your perspective. Like this is, it's opening. But I, but I realize I've been taking herbs in things for years. I guess my thought process is especially for those more in the natural camp, they want to stick to natural. This would be the closest thing to food. I mean it's things that you eat, things that you consume. So to me, and it grows in nature. So to me, I love this as like a first liner of like, let's start here.

That's a. I, I love that you said that so much, Natalie, because that's how I feel like too is if you're in tune with your body, you, you're working on your food, you're moving your body and, and then the teas and the herbs are such a great way to nourish, to augment your healthy lifestyle, to tweak the things that are like, yeah, they're not life threatening. They're not like critical health conditions. They're, you know, they're, you're going to help with inflammation. You're, you're, you're going to be less bloated. You're going to do right stuff to just make your everyday life better. It is a. And you might not ever get to that point of having to have surgeries and stuff. If you're taking care of yourself with food, with herbs.

I'm even thinking of things like, okay, so like I've been teaching about using berberine for years. Like I tell people in my programs and one of my dear friends sells a sugar fixer, you know, product for, it's Berberine. Actually two of my friends have a product for that. But as I'm listening to you, I'm like, okay, I see the place for berberine, but why even go there? Like, why would we instead not do this, like what you're talking about with your tea, for example, and just avoid it altogether? So like it's just going back steps. It's just, and I, and I like that it's like going to the root, root, root so instead of saying, like, if you go to the extreme, okay, I've got high blood sugar, so I'm gonna take a pharmaceutical that's maybe metformin or whatever. Fine. But the step before that is. Okay, with my meals, let me take berberine. Okay. But the step before that is let's not even have the sugar.

And.

And let's. How do we do that? It's the herb. So it's like that elementary step. Right. So to me, it makes sense. Like, why not start with that right.

Now and why not really start incorporating it into your life? I want to share something that you might not know about berberine, that you might find interesting.

Okay.

Is berberine is an alkaloid that's found in the roots of some of our most popular medicinal plants like goldenseal and barberry. The Latin name is berberis. Because of the berberine. Yeah. And that has a blood sugar lowering capacity to it. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. So now you know. Now you know.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. There's an herb that grows up north in Arizona that it. The root contains a lot of berberine.

That's wild. Okay. How does your daytime. I haven't tried the daytime cortisol one yet. How is that different? And would that make you sleepy the way the evening one can?

No, there is. It's a different mix of herbs. One of the herbs in there that gives it like a nice flavor. It's rooibos. And rooibos is. Are you familiar with Roy Boss? No. It is similar in benefit to green tea, except it has no caffeine. It comes from South Africa and has a lot of antioxidants in it. And it's in there because. Not only because it tastes nice, but because it's so antioxidant, it can relieve some of the oxidative stress on your body.

Oh, okay. Got it. So you got antioxidant. That's. So you're going against oxidative stress. It's the opposite. Opposite of that. Yeah. So this is. Okay, so when I'm connecting a lot of dots here, my second book was called Aging in Reverse. I don't love that title now, but that was my second book and we. I did a lot of herbal in herbs and food. Like, so thinking of, like, when you say herbs and spices. And I looked, I remember looking and researching medicinal benefits of those, but I'm just connecting the dots that this is like a whole nother layer that I wasn't even considering with teas. So this is. This is really Informative.

Yeah.

I want to ask you about some other herbs, but before I keep going, I just want to mention if those of you that are like piquing your interest, as Keda said, you can, you can experiment with finding herbs yourself or even finding supplements. But my advice is to. I'm drinking one of her teas right now as we're talking. She, they make, she makes teas. She has a company, it's called Loose Leaf. Loose Leaf is her brand and Loose tea market. Yep, Looseleaf tea market. And I'm going to link all this up and she's got some brilliant teas and they taste good. And the other cool thing that she does is they're not in those toxic tea bags. Like so it's all loosely. Can you just explain it for a quick second? Like why Loose Leaf versus when we buy something already in a tea bag?

Absolutely, yeah. Loose leaf tea is the gold standard of tea. Because when tea comes in a tea bag, first you have to look at the material of the teabag. What is it made out of? Is it made out of like, like just. Is it made out of paper, chemical free paper or does it have plastic fibers in it? And a lot of companies, they're, they're starting to do it less now. Now they're study. Yeah, a big study came out from the UK and like I think 2019 that just blew open how many microplastics were in tea bags. So a lot of tea companies were like, oh, I got to clean this up now. So you have to be careful what those tea bags are made out of. So you're not getting microplastic plastics. Plus they grind the tea leaves, herbs, spices, whatever, super fine in order to. So it's not gonna poke holes in your tea bag.

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. Yeah. And yours tastes really good. So you figured out some awesome spidey sense formula there because they taste really good. If you go to their website and I'll. It's looseleafteamarket.com if you want a discount, you. There's two ways to get it. You can either put forward slash discount discount forward slash Natalie, Jill or if you just go to their website, even there's, there is a little discount thing that pops up. So whether you go through my name or you just go to their website, I found that yesterday. There's, there's a 15 off at least. So you can, you can try. The first time I sent somebody there, they said, oh, I want to, I want to try all these. When I was, when me and My husband were trying them and her comment was, wow, these are, these are pricey. And I said, and they're not though when you know the benefits. But can you say what you said to that keto when I said they're priceless? Pricey?

Yeah. Is the tea price. Diabetes is pricey.

That's right.

Heart disease is pricey. Alzheimer's is pricey.

And they're not that pricey, by the way. Yes. Are they more expensive than like Lipton tea at your tea mark at the store? Yes, but there's a reason it's not mass, it's not made the same.

It's not that it's less than a dollar per serving.

Yeah. So there you go.

Like go to Starbucks. Nobody, nobody complains about Starbucks. No, it's like what, six, seven, eight dollars for.

I know, but regardless, you can try, you can try one with 15% off. So it's either looseleafteamarket.com discount forward slash, Natalie, Jill, or just if you just go to their website, a little pop up comes up with a 15%. So either way, just happy for you to try it. Okay, what did I miss here? Because I only tried the cortisol and the sugar, but can you talk to us about a few other herbs that are relevant to midlife and why you decided to put those in tea? Just so we.

Absolutely. Well, the. Yeah, there's just so many herbs that are, that are important. Like we make another tea for inflammation that has herbs that are anti inflammatory and also cooling to your body. One of our teas is called inflammation relief and it's made with another adaptogenic herb called tulsi, which also known as holy basil and that's anti inflammatory. But it also has a beneficial effect on your mind and on your nervous system. So that's an important one. And then we threw some important cooling herbs in there like chrysanthemum. And chrysanthemum is an important herb in traditional Chinese medicine because, because of its cooling effect on the body. When I say cooling effect, I don't mean that you're going to drink it and then you're going to just get cold. Inflammation is heat.

Okay, what do you mean by that? Inflammation is heat. Explain that.

Well, the, the hallmarks of inflammation. There's four hallmarks of inflammation. Heat, redness, pain and swelling.

Okay, okay.

So if you start to disperse that heat heat, if it cools the body, then you're like, they use it as an anti aging herb because too much heat will, you know, too much inflammation has such a devastating effect on Your whole body.

Wait, hold on. I'm just having a whole aha moment here on something. Maybe I'm going, maybe I'm stretching this. I don't know. But when we have hot flashes in midlife and it's your body's trying to cool itself because of the drop in estrogen, is that creating inflammation too? Is that, are those hot flashes themselves shelves part of inflammation?

I know of? Not that I know of. I have heard, and this is more of an eastern philosophy, so I, I don't know what science is behind it. It's just something like as an herbalist, I've heard this, that because. Because estrogen is stored in our fat.

One of the trains of thought is that the hot flashes happen to release estrogen. Estrogen. Stored estrogen.

Wow.

Okay. So that, so that we can, we can access it more.

That's an interesting thought process. Well, I've heard and I've never really quite figured. I mean, obviously I know the benefits of decline, I know the negatives of declining estrogen, but I've also heard that hot flashes are detrimental on our health. So I was just. As you said that I was like, wait a minute, I wonder if there's something with that and why it's bad for our health. So just, it was just a thought. Which would. Then I'm jumping the gun here. But I'm like, I wonder if, if you're. That herb would also help with hot flashes too. So I don't know.

It does.

Yeah. So maybe I'm right. My little hypothesis.

Yeah. Anything that's cooling like, like rose petals is another tea that's cooling. And it's used pretty extensively in India as a, as a cooling herb. So it's great for women in midlife because there's, because we don't have the estrogen, we're feeling so much more inflammation like that everything hurts. Once you, you know, you know, p. Once you pass that menopausal gateway, everything hurts.

Yeah.

And so if you start taking anti inflammatory herbs and you're moving your body like at least 20 minutes of moderate exercise a day and you're not eating pro inflammatory foods like sugar, which is so pro. Inflammatory, then you're, you're setting yourself up for success.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay. So I just want to touch. I know we, we didn't really get into gut health there. I've done so many episodes on gut health. But you had mentioned there' herbs that are ideal for gut health. Can you touch on what those are?

Yeah, well, there's different herbs that have different actions on gut health. Like we talked about the effect of bitter herbs, like something like dandelion root. Okay. I use that in a lot of our teas. Like one of the teas, sleek and slender is it has that herb gymnema in much smaller quantities, but it'll still like. It helps with the sugar cravings. It helps to boost your metabolism, but also. Also helps to really improve your digestion through a couple of different mechanisms. One of them is it has dandelion root that's. That really supports your liver because it has that bitterness.

Doesn't it help with bloating, too? I. I've heard that dandelion root can help with water retention.

That's dandelion leaf.

Okay, got it.

Different, more so dandelion root has more of an affinity with the liver. Dandelion leaf has more of an affinity with the kidneys, even though they both benefit. Like, dandelion leaf is more bitter than the root root. And so you're going to get liver benefits. And dandelion root is going to benefit the kidneys too. But it's just like each one has a little bit more strong suit with those two separate organs. So that tea also has aromatic herbs. And the aromatic herbs, I just touched on it briefly, but what they do is they help to relieve gas and bloating in your digestive system. So if you eat a really big meal and then you drink a tea that has something like peppermint or fennel, chamomile has that lavender, cinnamon, cardamom, the things that are in chai, they're going to help to ease bloating. They help relieve trapped gas. Yeah, the herbal. Remember I told you we have herbal action words. And the herb that, the name for that is carminative and that means to sing. And that's referring to, you know, when you have little toots, it'll help you.

Have toots if you're. Okay. Wait, wait, which one is this again? Say that we all need that for our. Probably our spouses.

Oh, yeah, it's the aromatic herbs. And that's more of like a. A class of herbs. Like anything that when you open it, when you open it up and you smell it like peppermint, it's very aromatic. Ginger is aromatic. Cardamom, cinnamon, all those ones, those are essential oils that are in that plant naturally. And when you smell, smell it, you know, okay, this is an aromatic and it's going to help my tummy.

Okay, this is a completely different question, but I'm just curious now that you just brought that up when people talk, because there's a whole nother. I didn't even mention essential oils. When people talk about that. I don't know much about them. But is that the oil from a lot of these herbs? Is that what that is? So it's kind of like. Is it linking it the same way or is it trying to.

Well, essential oils are extracted from the herbs, usually by steam distillation, but sometimes through other means. Like with citrus, the peels are cold pressed, but they're highly concentrated volatile substances. And there was a period of time when people were drinking essential oils and it's just. Yeah, it is just not a safe practice as an herbalist. Like just, just step away. That is not how they're intended to be used in, in Europe they have developed protocols that are safe, but it's not like you put a, you know, three or four drops of lemon oil in your water. That's insanity. That can really like mess up your esophagus and your stomach lining. Yeah, people just, just don't know and they need to know that.

I see people doing that all the time. They'll drop like rose oil or they'll drop pep. Like they're doing that in their stuff.

Yeah, no, because when you. Essential oils are super, super, super concentrated. So one drop in like a teaspoon of carrier oil, like olive oil or coconut oil or something, and you rub it onto your skin, it's absorbed into your skin. It's getting into your body. You don't have to ingest it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's getting into you. When you smell it, it's getting into you because those, those little, little molecules have entered into your body.

Well, this is fascinating. Keita. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to add in the sugar one. What, what was that one called again? The sh. The one that Brooks has been drinking. It's sugar.

Sugar proof.

Sugar proof. Sugar proof. Okay. I think all of us women need to be really looking at sugar proof, especially because of the. All these dangerous problems with sugar. And I love this idea of being able to totally avoid. And then the cortisol one is the, the one the nighttime I've been doing. I'm going to start adding in the day and I'll have to report back on how that's feeling. So y', all, if you want to check this out, it's looseleafteamarket.com forward/discount forward slash. Natalie, Jill, if you want to get a discount or just go to their main website and a pop up will come up the first time you're there with a 15%. I'll also link up Keita's company, Instagram and website in the show notes. Thank you so much Kita. This was super informative. I learned a lot today.

Today. Thank you. Yay. Well it's such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for inviting me on your show.

Thank you for joining this midlife conversation today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends and family and be sure to tag me on social media. Natalie Jill Fit the biggest thank you you can give me if you love this show is to leave a review and hopefully a nice one at that. Now as a gift, if you do leave me a nice review and screenshot and send it to supportataliejill.com we will happily send you our digital DSR journal as a thank you to advertise on this podcast. Partnerships on this show are done by partnerships by Category 3 media group. To advertise or to inquire about that, reach out To Sales Admin Category 3 CA.

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