Ancient Medicine Cabinet: Guggul – The Ayurvedic Herb for Triglycerides, Fatty Liver, & Thyroid Support

Opening on Natural vs. Targeted Supplements 0:00

The word natural, I think we've talked about this a lot, it really doesn't have any meaning anymore. Magnesium powder is not natural. You can't just go out in the grocery store and get a food that has only magnesium in it. That's not, natural it's less harmful. It is less targeted. it is something we can use with a great safety profile. But it isn't actually natural. So I kind of challenge that. And so with Sabinsa, what I love about Sabinca deciding to go into some single herbals and bring some of their really good single raw materials to the retailer is we can actually say, you know, I want Bacopa, but I wanna Bocopa that is you know, tested the minute it enters the facility.

It's free of impurities. it has botanical ID. Its extracted in the way that all of the studies say it should be extracted and it's given to you in a dose that can be adjusted easily to meet the research. And you can take that and then you combine it with magnesium if you want or glycine or whatever else you might be taking for cognitive improvement and you get to read the researchers. You get decide how you're going to take it and adjust it to your life. Like you got to make the formula in you. Welcome to Vitality Radio, the podcast that helps you make sense of natural supplements and thrive without pharma drugs.

I'm Jared St. Clair. Hello and welcome to Vitality Radio. I am your host. My name is Jared St. Clair and it's good to be with you again on another episode.I had the pleasure of just meeting my next guest over the last 15 minutes before we hit record to talk about the topic that we're going to discuss today and we are going talk a lot about Ayurvedic medicine and what that is. And I would anticipate that most people listening to this show have heard of it and most don't really understand it that well.

It's the ancient Indian tradition of herbalism and we'll talk about that and how it works and why it matters and you can learn from it for your own uses

Introducing the Guest and Raw Material Sourcing 2:06

and purposes for you health. We're also going to talk raw material sourcing. When I say raw materials, I mean the individual ingredient, the herb. Where has that ashwagandha grown? how is it sourced, what's in it besides the ashwagandha itself in terms of potential contaminants, things like that. So we're gonna get into that as well. I think it's gonna be a fascinating conversation. My guest is gonna to be Amberlyn Vitale. She's a certified nutritionist, Ayurvedic clinical consultant and the national educator for Sabensa Wellness, a company that I have worked with for years.

In fact, one of the main ingredients in one my very first formulas was sourched from Sabenza. This is a company that has a big presence right here in Utah, but is, uh, company, that originated in India and they are one of my most trusted raw material suppliers. So that's one. The primary reason I invited Amber on Amber has had more than 15 years of experience in integrative nutrition, herbal medicine, and dietary supplements. She educates practitioners, retailers and consumers on the science and quality behind natural health products.

and I'm really happy to have you here today. Amber, thanks and welcome to Vitality Radio. Thanks so much, Jared. I am happy be here. Well, as I said, before we hit record, there's a reason why I decided to have you on and you and I had not met before, but I love the brand that you represent. I'm a big, big fan of Sabensa and as we were talking, you gave me a bit of a history of how you came to know Ayurvedic medicine. And I mean, how do you share that when we get into that part of the show? Cause it was pretty interesting to me, But let's first talk about just raw materials.

Cause people that listen to vitality radio. know that one of the big focuses that I have is product development for my own brand, but also trying to shine a light on how to determine if you're getting a good quality product from somebody else. And from a consumer standpoint, that can be a pretty daunting task for sure. So let's talk a little bit about this because by 2012, according to the bio that you sent me, you had already landed on sourcing transparency as a defining quality differentiator.

What had you learned in your history and the industry at that point that had, really looking at where does the actual source of this stuff come from? Yeah, I mean, early on the supplement industry was the Wild West. You and I, by what you told me earlier, at five years old in 1977 in a health food store, know that we are the same age and we grew up in the the era of health foods stores and bulk bins of soy nuts and carob and brewer's yeast and the smell of a healthy store. And there were very few brands that knew were really well regulated.

There were a lot of regulations that came in. later and along the way to really help people. I grew up loving whole powders. But what I saw is that when we get into a health food store and we cannot help every single customer, and they need to be able to look at a bottle and know from what is written on the bottle that they can trust that brand, that that they know exactly what's in it, that know if they're excipients, meaning things that help it flow, powders, stabilizers, if that's going to be okay for them or not, and then if the care beyond their own health.

Is this organically grown? is this contributing to a village in India? Is this donating and giving back to the planet? is promoting regenerative farming? So is non-GMO project verified? There anything in here that could be a GMO that I even have to worry about? We want certain seals and certifications to indicate to what this is that they're holding in their hands. And if I had my own health food store like you do, I would only have products that clearly indicate these things where there isn't really guesswork.

I spent a lot of years after 2012 educating the customer base what to look for. Sometimes it bites me in the back because they were like, does this have that seal? I did teach you in this store five years ago to ask me that, didn't I? Yeah, it can be very overwhelming for sure. And one of the things that I hear from my listeners and my customers at Vitality Nutrition on a pretty regular basis is, you know, where do I start? How do know? You know just these really basic but important questions about, what they're putting in their body and what I tell everybody that you know, starts a job here at Vitality.

I've bought the store from my parents 32 years ago. And ever since then, as I hired people to work here, one of the first things I tell them is, Hey, we're not selling typical retail goods. You know? We're selling music. We are not telling t-shirts. we are selling the promise of vitality and we selling things that people put in their body. So we have to take that as a very serious responsibility as to, you what we recommending, what were sourcing. And so it's one of the big reasons why this show exists is to try and help people understand and kind of see through the smoke screens of marketing and all that kind stuff to what really matters when it comes to the source.

So now you've been kind all over the industry in a lot of different places and you have a pretty extensive education, but most recently,

Why Transparency and Testing Matter 7:24

As you come over to Sebenza, you're working kind of in an interesting position because Sebinza has always been known, at least to me, as primarily a raw material company, a company that is sourcing ingredients and then selling them to people like me to put into their products. What have you seen since you've been with Sebanza when it comes to how they're sourcings their product and determining whether or not what they are getting is the level of quality that you want and that your going to be satisfied with to sell out to your customers?

Having been a practitioner for years and then come into this industry of the natural products and really wanting to promote and champion those things that are done right. I walk this fine line between whole foods the way our body knows how to handle them and clean, tested, free of impurities, directed exactly what a person needs. The word natural, I think we've talked about this a lot, it really doesn't have any meaning anymore. Magnesium powder is not natural. You can't just go out in the grocery store and get a food that has only magnesium in it.

That's not, natural it's less harmful. It is less targeted. it is something we can use with a great safety profile. But it isn't actually natural. So I kind of challenge that. And so with Sabinsa, what I love about Sabinca deciding to go into some single herbals and bring some of their really good single raw materials to the retailer is we can actually say, you know, I want Bacopa, but I wanna Bocopa that is you know, tested the minute it enters the facility. It's free of impurities. it has botanical ID.

Its extracted in the way that all of the studies say it should be extracted and it's given to you in a dose that can be adjusted easily to meet the research. And you can take that and then you combine it with magnesium if you want or glycine or whatever else you might be taking for cognitive improvement. And you get to read the research, you to decide how you're going to take that and adjust it to your life. You get make the formula in you, whereas you were buying their Bacopa to make formulae in your bottle or in a capsule.

So I love having single raw materials available to the consumer that usually are only available in formula, but are the quality of oversight from the minute it enters this country to getting on the shelf. You know, there's tremendous like pharmaceutical level quality standards with Sebenza. And I think when things are coming from all over the world, our customers want to know first of all, is this safe? And I've been banging this drum for a long time. Things that come from another country into a really good company like Sabinsa undergo far more oversight than things coming from the Pacific Northwest.

You get like several levels of investigation more than when things are domestic. So you should actually, if you're talking about a good companies, you actually have good confidence in that. Yeah. And one of the things that I think, unfortunately, everything tends to get lumped together, right? Because there are good quality ingredients that come from China. But generally speaking, there were a lot of people that are looking at it and saying, well, China, I don't want anything from. Well, not necessarily.

It depends on how it's tested. If we're able to prove that there's something good. India is a very similar story. good quality stuff that comes out of India and not such good qualities stuff. It comes down to India. Really matters a lot. What happens when it crosses the border and what kind of testing is applied to it. Yeah, exactly. When we go, you know, the internet just made it all the Wild West again, because you're not because there's rules in place, right? But not everybody follows the rules.

No. And you've got a brick and mortar store and you don't want to lose that. So you're going to vet the brands that you choose to carry in your store. You're gonna know about them. Instagram shopping and that kind of thing. There's really little oversight. So I really, really want people to come back to their brick and mortar independent retailers because you know, you've got a legacy to maintain. Yeah. And thankfully there's still kind at the grassroots of this industry, a whole bunch of people that really really love what we do.

You know, back in 1977, that's the only kind of people that were in this industry because there was barely an industry at all. The people who were selling the carib you were talking about, right? These were people, they were passionate about it because it wasn't a lot of money in it back then. And now the supplement industry is a big industry. It's a multi-billion dollar industry and there are big players in the industry, and some of the bigger companies are Certainly very good companies out there doing really good work.

And sometimes we have these companies that pop up and market like crazy and become big, but maybe what's, you know, behind the curtain isn't as good as we'd like it to be. So we do have to, be cautious with that. and that is ultimately the big thing. I always tell people that shop at Vitality. When I have access to just about any brand that I want, most brands would like to sell into our store, except for the ones that go only direct to consumers. And that's a whole different story, depending on the company.

But I don't have to carry any of those brands. That's the beauty of it. I get to be the gatekeeper and I look at them and check them out and utilize the knowledge that i've been blessed with over the years of being in the industry. to determine whether or not it's something that, you know, I want to bring in. It's actually very interesting. I've had a few instances where I'm talking to a rep from a new brand. And I don't know who the brand is. They call me out of the blue, send me an email, whatever it is, and I am looking through their products and see obvious issues that the sales rep doesn't understand because they're just hired to sell the product.

they don' know the ingredients or the formulas or any of that kind of stuff. and i'll point out these issues and say, What's going on here? Why are you trying to sell me this when I can tell that it's that? And it always like this shock to the system. Like what? I mean, they told me and now you're telling me that. It's an interesting thing. So yeah, we got to gatekeep this thing and hopefully consumers are, you know, whether they're shopping here at my shop in Bountiful or South Ogden or on our website or whatever, if you are not, that's okay, but shop with your local independent.

Those are the people that love what they do and generally speaking are going to do a good job for you. So I couldn't agree more with you on that. Let's just hit one more thing on, well, actually I want to mention one thing and then I'm going ask you one question about Sabinsa. We have this big expo every year in March that is the biggest show in the world when it comes to natural health. I've been going there since I was 12 years old and it's an unbelievable, it was like I don't even know how to describe it to someone who's not been there.

And one of the things that I saw this year. My first experience, I was like, oh my God, it's a candy store. Yeah, the biggest candy story on earth. For sure. So one thing that saw that this for the first time was the name Sabensa on the finished products of a bunch of different herbal products. I should say summer formulas. Most are single herbs like you talked about. And I didn't know that was ever going to be a thing. So I got really excited about that because I already knew with, I know who Sabinsa is.

I knew what their quality standards are. Great success with their ingredients for decades now at Vitality. And so when I saw that, it was a no brainer for me to grab them up and bring them into the store because. That at least we had all the quality controls in place. So let's talk about, because you mentioned something to me before we started recording that I think is really important. The standards that Sebenza uses for their sourcing and their testing. Talk a little bit about that specifically and how they're actually guaranteeing that what's in the bottle is what we want it to be clean, pure, potent, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, there's two levels to that. What you want to know from a raw material supplier and even someone who is formulating and putting a finished good on the shelf, which could be the same company or could two separate companies. You want know that every single ingredient, including the capsules or some maltodextrin that comes into that facility gets tested. What is it? Is it pure? How, what is the potency of it. So if we're talking about an herb, incomes, let's stick with Bacopa. We do a botanical ID.

Potency, you know, per milligram. What does its potence? Purity. and you're identifying that this raw material is going to be safe and effective for your purposes. Things get quarantined. I've been through the Subinsa facility there in Utah. things get quarantine until those results are back. They don't enter the rest of the warehouse until the results back, so that is hugely important and in formulating the same thing is true. You're going to test every single ingredient for Potency Puree and Botanical ID before you ever blend them together.

Sabinsa Quality Standards and Single-Herb Formulas 16:48

And then once those things are ready to go out on the shelf, you want third-party testing. You don't want only in-house testing, you absolutely need to have third party testing any company worth its salt is going to a part of their good manufacturing practice. So don't be offended if the company gets offended, you know, just it's like they they already had that built into their culture. Sebenza always had built in to their cultural. It's a no brainer. We test, we have all the facilities to do so, and we send it out to a third party lab as well.

Now, every raw material that comes into a manufacturer that's just going to formulate or a manufacture that is going be, creating their raw materials, everything comes with its own certificate of analysis from its origin. The difference in quality of a company is a country that says, that's nice, but I have to do my own testing, right? So we don't want to just trust what came, the papers that came with the drum of the herb powder, we want and make certain there's no hope. We don't just hope and pray, we test and makes sure that the quality is there.

So that is huge and that's a huge differentiating factor. And so when Sabinsa then says, hey, We've got some formulations. They're super simple. we're using some of our wonderful single raw materials. and we want to put them out there, they're just bare bones, simple formulations that are geared towards the thing that causes the most mortality in our country, which is aging. Getting old is pretty much the more mortal thing happen to you. So, you know, we want to focus on blood sugar levels. We want the oxidation of lipids and we wanna focus the drop in antioxidants that are opposing all of our free radicals that we're making as we age.

formulas that are focused on that, but I think the real thing with Sabenza Wellness is to keep available to the consumer these individual herbs as well so that you can really enjoy how nature formulated each individual plant. Well, one of the things that I love, and I hadn't thought about it, it's funny, but when we were first talking before we hit record, you talked about the origin of name nature's formulary, where you have a whole bunch of single herbs and nature formulated that herb in a very specific way to be effective on its own.

I'm a huge fan of blends and herbal synergy and all that kind of stuff. But some of these herbs are, well, I would say all of this herbs have unique power. you know, unto themselves. And it's also, I think it helps with the individualization of supplementing, trying, you, know just a Bacopa or just to Google or, that type of thing. So I like that. Again, we know the qualities where we want it to be. At least it has got my stamp of approval anyway. Love that! Let's dig into now Ayurvedic medicine, and we're not going to have a ton of time for this, but what I'm hoping is just kind of a top level, high level look at it for people that are a little bit unsure.

Ayureveda is, the word gets thrown around a lot nowadays. I remember, you know, I am old enough to remember and I think you are too, when we didn't hear that word in herbal medicine in America. And then all of a sudden we start hearing about Ayurvedic tradition and Ayurevedian herbalism. And I'm like, okay, it's from India that I know that. What does that actually mean? So I think people are curious about it. I would say some might even be skeptical that it just kind of ancient folklore. Maybe there's nothing to it?

How do you explain it to someone who is just kinda dipping their toes in, doesn't really know much about. Well, first off, it's originating as best we know from the Indus River Valley, which is actually where Pakistan is now, but has spread into those countries that are now Pakistan, a lot of the countries ending in Stan, and India has has spread to Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, is the national medicine in kind of combination with Chinese medicine through all of, you know, Buddhism. Ayurveda has merged with Unani medicine, which is Arabic medicine.

But Ayureveda, means the science of life or the study of Life. And so I just want to say that because we think it's so foreign, but it is literally just like following a biblical diet or a diet from the Torah or diet because this is where we're feeling that there is a manual that should have been given to us with this body that is our temple to keep ourselves healthy, to attain our highest nature. And that can be said across all wisdom traditions that there are these kinds of instructions. It's just that Ayurveda is so vast.

The instructional knowledge is vast, so it is literally the study of life, the science of Life. it's saying know yourself, know your strengths, use them to support you in your weaknesses. Accept yourself. Love yourself Raise yourself up, be the very best you that you can be, which is very good advice. And then there's all of these lifestyles, exercises, breath work, prayers, and food and herbs that will help you in your own bio individuality, Which is determined through very keen observation. You know, ancient Ayurveda uses all the senses with a patient to determine what is going on with them in a way that you wish your doctor would listen to you, you know?

We're looking at fingernails, we're look at skin, and we are pulling on the skin. We are measuring the wrist, looking the tongue, the eyes, sniffing the urine, look the sputum, at the stool, smelling your body odor, everything, in Ayurveda the way that it was years ago. So it's truly a vast tome of knowledge and for people who think it is outdated, More than 2,000 years ago, there's documented tools for surgery for brain surgery, gallbladder surgery appendix removal, cesarean sections, bladder installations.

They would make herbal and broth blends to fill the bladder, to feel the uterus, and to heal these organs. And we don't think of it as high tech, but it was very high-tech. See for 2000 years ago. Especially, yes. And so I came to it in 1996 and I just was fascinated from the get-go. I fell into the lap of this feels right to me as a tool. I love that. Let me ask you this, I'm curious, can you think of an example you can share with our listeners about like an Ayurvedic observation or a belief that has now been clearly proven in modern research?

Yes. Well, first of all, there are tremendous studies out of top universities in India proving aerogenomics. So taking an Ayurvedic Vaidya doctor, having them do the pulse work, all the observational work. Comparing that to a genetic test where we're doing gene analysis on the person and showing equal results showing equivalent results, showing that they match. So wow, that's fascinating. Look into higher genomics. Yeah, yeah. And then I think a really, a, really cool thing that just pops into my mind, uh, ashwagandha and chitauri very, very studied Ayurvedic herbs, Ashwaga especially.

understanding. If we look at the science and we see, oh, normalizes cortisol, helps you get a good night's sleep, help you work out harder, recover faster, have more endurance while working out, it helps manage stress, and helps with fertility and immune resilience.

What Ayurveda Means and Where It Comes From 25:06

Well, if we go to Ayurveda, it's going to say works on the adrenals. It's an adaptogen. it helps your body understand what is really dangerous and what it is not. Ayurveda goes through the tissues. You eat it, it goes into your digestive tract, and it gets into the bloodstream. It affects your muscles, endurance, you can work out faster. Then it actually goes to your bone. Your fatty tissues normalize. If we take Ashwagandha for six months, we have better cholesterol levels, better inflammatory markers, thyroid markers and blood sugar markers.

And then it goes to your nervous system and then goes your reproductive system. So there's seven tissues in Ayurveda that something you put in your mouth goes through over 35 days. And after that 35th day, if everything got done right, you get this immune resilience, like you literally create this field of absolute immune, resilience and vitality that stays with you. And the whole goal is to keep building that sort of umbrella of resilience around yourself. It's called OJAS, O-J-A-S, and that allows you to really become your best self.

So we're seeing that science is coming up with these benefits that really match the way that Ayurveda has viewed it. And I find it, I just smile and I'm like, that's cool. We were right all around, all along, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So let me ask you this one because this is one that I think if anybody's heard a little bit about Ayurveda but hasn't studied it a lot, besides the herbs themselves, the thing that comes up the most is the dosha framework. Can you explain that to my listeners?

Right. So, I mean, you could get into the Sanskrit and you can say maivata, pitta, or kaffa. And some people might be familiar with those terms, but I try to make it really approachable. It comes down really to three main questions. that I ask people at the store level, do you run hot or cold? Is your skin dry or moist or dry, or oily? And are you a calm person or an excitable person, you know, stimulated or a little like low key, right? because these are kind of like the hot and cold and the moist and dry are the two top questions about a person and about what we're going to eat or take as an herb or do as a activity.

So if somebody runs hot, and they sweat easily, which I would say is probably your constitution, we are going have to be conscientious about telling them to just go in the sauna for 30 minutes a day or work outside in middle of the day in a hot sun in Florida. that is not their ideal climate. So opposite heels. If you run hot and sweaty and frustrated and agitated and you tend to get rashes and sunburn, then we need to use things that are cooling and soothing and a little bit drying and get the fluid out in order to make you feel the most comfortable and have your body be the best balance.

A really good point here, and I think people can relate to this, My grandfather, a really good family friend of mine that was the same age as my parents, two people that I can say from my childhood who were outside all the time in the hot, dry sun, constantly getting sun on their bodies, and both of them had inflammatory autoimmune conditions later in life that were They just couldn't get rid of them. And one of those was really knowledgeable about Ayurveda and really tried to keep a lifestyle and a diet after the age of 65 to mitigate that.

But it was entrenched because all that heat and excess just creates dis-ease in the body and it starts you down a pathway. I'm not saying there's not hope, but Ayura Veda is much better at prevention. know yourself, prevent disease, then it is curing unless you can just stop life and go for a month and get panchakarma, which is where we just basically replace everything in your body, you know, with all kinds of different therapies and you just dedicate to recovering and rejuvenating. It's really good at that.

Most people don't take time to do that, So knowing yourself is what the doshas are about. If you're cold and dry, don't live in a cold, dry climate. Don't eat cold dry food like salad. You'll get gassy. flight attendants, you know, back in the day, they used to have to be really thin, and they're up in air and their wearing heels. So heels are up on the air, flying up into air. And they have a thin build and a dry constitution. They want to stay thin so they don't eat a lot. Then they are flying and the tendency to nervous system disorders and flight attendance was huge.

And we still even see it today, but it was really bad back when you could actually say you can't be hired unless you're super thin and beautiful, right? And now today people come with all different constitutions. The best person to be a flight attendant is somebody with a little stronger bone structure who has a regular appetite, who makes sure to get their meals in, has thicker skin, a bit moister skin and runs a lot warmer. They're going to tolerate that occupation much better. So Ayurvedic doshas allow us to really look at ourselves individually, and you can't wish yourself into being something else.

Doshas, Constitution, and Lifestyle Balance 31:06

You have to love who you are. There is no one constitution better than another. It really depends on what your goal is, but there are certain constitutions that are better for certain jobs, right? And so you own a company, so I know you're a Pitta. That's how your mind works, there's no doubt. Now what else is in there? take some time getting to know you to see what else is going on in there. How our mind works, what we are physiologically, and what were we when we were a child, how we're born with, these can all be variations.

Well, one of the things that I love about it and I think you put it quite eloquently just there is that it's not just you're a pitta so this herb makes sense for you. This is your constitution and so you need to look at the entire lifestyle picture from where you live, what you do as an occupation, how you eat and how your supplement and pretty much everything in between, even how exercise and everything else to, you know, can optimize what that constitution is. And it is interesting too because when you look the healing traditions that have been around forever, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and homeopathy, they all have some real similarities there where they really are looking at the individual before they're ever looking the food or the herb or climate.

They're looking that individual and figuring out where does that person fit within these things and how do we make up for possibly some of the deficiencies that are happening because that individual is not in the right place, whether it be work or where they live, that kind of thing. And you brought this up, you nailed me so far, but my wife is quite the opposite. So you say, don't live in a cold, dry climate if you're cold all the time. And she's cold all the time and we live in Utah, which is both cold and dry.

Uh, I'm hot all time. And I live. Which is pretty good for me. Right. Well, what we end up with is I wear a lot less than she does in the house. Let's put it that way. Way we like it. A lot more blankets on her side of the bed. But that's an interesting thing too, because then you have to say, okay, how do we find balance as a couple, not just as individuals? And you mentioned the sauna thing, and then there's cold plunging and hot cold therapy, she's probably not a great candidate for cold-plunging, I'm probably a not great for a sauna.

Yeah, it'll mess with her nervous system. So let's really take control of our health and really responsibility for our heath and also accept and love our differences where she's not going to be like, I don't know why you're always so hot all the time. I need to turn out that, you know, we don' get upset. We're like oh, that's you. Let's mitigate that for you, We'll let you have something cool to drink in the morning. I'm going to have hot to do drink. You can go do a cold plunge. You're good at this because that's exactly what happens.

I reach for the cold drink. She reaches for hot drink, you've got it. And it's interesting too, because the good news is that when she, she never complains about how hot I am all the time because my hands are always warm and that really good for her. Am always the warm hug or the worm cuddle. That's really for both of us. So it works out okay as far as that goes. You put your cold hands on my neck. It works. Right on top of my burning head. Exactly. Well, in an Ayurveda, we say that the pitta tends to have early hair loss because the heat, just the, heat rises and it just literally, yeah.

And sadly, you know, the tendency is then you wear a hat and then that traps the Heat. So there would have been cooling head massages, bring garage oil, things like that. Pitta might be doing all of their life to cool that Well, this is all super fascinating. I'll tell you, but I have just enough knowledge of Ayurveda to be a little bit dangerous. You've taught me quite a bit already in just the few minutes that we've spoken about it, which I very much appreciate. And one of the things that I actually, so my father and my listeners, I think know this to a large degree, started a company called Ridgecrest Herbals.

Yeah, and their entire tradition started as a Chinese herbal formula company. Everything was TCM for the first 20 years that they were in business because all the formulas were not his formulas. They were formulas that he actually procured from Chinese Herbal Formulators. And many of them have documentation going back hundreds of years, if not thousands of year in TCN. I didn't know thing one about traditional Chinese medicine when he started that company almost 40 years ago. had mostly been schooled in the Dr.

Christopher's tradition of, you know, more European Western medicine, herbal medicine stuff. And I was just fascinated because there was all this stuff about, energetic flow, chi and hot and cold and damp and dry. Kind of sounds familiar, right? When we talked to Ayurveda versus TCM, it's not the same thing, but they have a lot of similarities in terms of how they look at it. And, and, as you said, you know, now they kind of blended together in some parts of the world as well. Right. So I became fascinated about it years ago and I don't know when it was.

It's got to be 25 years. Now probably. When I started learning just a little bit about Ayurveda and the doshas and things like that, but I'll be completely transparent here. I didn't do that much with it. And it's just really just been over the last few months that I've decided to dig a bit further back in. It's why I invited you on. That's I decided do this series on the ancient medicine cabinet because One of my favorite parts about this podcast is that I get to educate myself in preparation to, educate my listeners.

And it's this real awesome dual benefit, right? So I plan to do much more digging on Ayurveda, learn more about it. and especially in relation to how the doshas impact the individuals that, I care about most my wife, my children, grandchildren and so on. So you've helped spark that even more than it was already sparked. I really, really appreciate that. love to have you back on and do a deeper dive on Ayurveda down the road too if that's something that we can put together. But the lovely thing about Sabinsa as a company to bring it back around to that and these raw materials that you've been using for a long time to formulate and that now are available in some formulas and in single herbs is it was founded because you know the founders came from India and came the Ayurevedic tradition and said this has worked for me.

But how do we standardize the care? How do make sure that every time I take Arjuna for my heart strength and the pumping of my blood that I'm getting the same herb, that i'm across the board. And so how do we take Ayurveda, apply science to it and make it consistent and accessible and easy to comply with for the U.S.

Closing Thoughts on Ayurveda and Sabinsa 38:00

consumer? And that was the goal of Sevensa and they have accomplished that goal mightily. Well, I love it. They're a great partner for me and have been forever. And it's actually interesting. The longer that I formulate, the more I rely on very specific raw material manufacturers. My, The list has shrunk, not grown as I've learned which brands are always consistently trustworthy. I always get what I want. It always passes the initial test and the third party test at my contract manufacturer. So Sabensa is one of those trusted resources.

I would say that, well, I have said that on this show probably five times before you were ever on the show. So certainly not saying it because you're here with me. I'm a huge fan of the brand and you've been a wealth of knowledge and information. Very much appreciate your passion for it and your education and for sharing it with my listeners here on Vitality Radio. And for everybody listening, I hope that this has sparked your interest. We're going to do a lot more on Ayurveda coming up. This is just the beginning of this series.

we'll talk about specific herbs. One of my favorite things to talk, about which is Triphala, which actually a combination of three things. on a show very, very soon. And we'll talk a little bit more about the doshas and things like that as well. As my wife, Jen, and I discover it together, how we can learn about our differences and how to optimize both of us in the same environment, we will be sharing that information with you aswell. So thank you, as always, for listening to Vitality Radio. Remember we are on YouTube now, so jump over there if you like to watch the show, or if just an easier point of access for you.

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