Stress Less: Herbal Remedies for Calm, Resilience, and Gut Health

Feeling overwhelmed by stress? Learn how to embrace the power of herbal remedies to support your body and mind during life’s toughest challenges. In this episode, we explore the stress-cortisol connection, the gut-brain axis, and lifestyle strategies that amplify the healing potential of herbs like lemon balm, chamomile, Tulsi, and ashwagandha.

📌 What You’ll Learn:

• 08:00 - The gut-brain connection 
• 10:30 - How herbal remedies work alongside lifestyle changes
• 14:00 - Top herbs for calming nerves/balancing cortisol

🌿 Mentioned in this Episode:

• Lemon Balm & Tulsi teas: Oshala Herb Farm
• Probiotics: Fullscript for 15% off supplements
• Learn more about becoming a community herbalist: Apply here

Tune in to take your first steps toward calm and resilience, one herbal remedy

 🌿 Ready to become the healer your community needs? Applications are open for the Community Herbalist Certification Program! Starting January 2025, this year-long program empowers you to create personalized remedies, understand herbs and the body, and make a lasting impact.. Apply here!

Do you or your kids find it hard to focus, and you just wish you could get them to stay on task?  If you've ever been there, WishGarden Herbs' Attention Ally may be the perfect thing for your kids, or you too. It's the perfect blend of herbs to calm the nerves and improve focus! You can grab yours right here.

If you're done struggling to keep your kids healthy as cold and flu season comes about, then you are going to LOVE Oregon's Wild Harvest and their Kids Echinacea with Raspberry flavoring. I know my daughter LOVES it, in fact she asks me for it all of the time, even if she's not sick!
Be sure to get yours w/ 15% off here!

Chapters

• 1:50 Herbal Remedies for Managing Stress
• 19:53 Herbal Remedies for Stress Management
• 33:33 Herbalist Path

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:51

Hello and welcome to the Herbalist Path, a podcast where you'll discover how to make your own herbal remedies at home so that you can take better care of yourself, better care of your family and better care of our planet. I'm Mel. I'm a clinical herbalist, environmental educator and mountain-l living mama with this crazy passion for teaching more mamas and their little loves how to use plants as medicine in a safe, effective and tasty way, so that there can be an herbalist in every home. Again, it's an absolute honor to have you on the journey down the herbalist path with me, so that together we can make herbalism Hashtag spread like wildflowers. Hello, hello and welcome to another episode here on the herbalist path. I'm so happy you're here, and I hope that this episode we're going through can give you a dose of inspiration and happiness too. So I really wanted to talk about this.

Speaker 1: 3:03

We're in the middle of the holiday season here in the United States, and oftentimes people can feel extreme amounts of stress during the holidays. I know that I certainly do, and so I wanted to come along and talk about how we can use herbs to manage our stress, our cortisol levels, how your gut health is directly correlated to your stress and cortisol levels as well, and how we can go through this season with a little bit of extra support from our beautiful plant friends. So, yeah, I don't know about you and how you handle the holidays. Are you somebody who's just always full of joy and delight during the holidays? Because if you are, please shoot me a message and let me know your secrets. But if you're like so many other people that do deal with just crazy amounts of stress like it's that time of year where we've got this extra pressure to buy all these gifts, which creates more financial pressure. This whole last quarter of the year, since the fall started, a lot of stressful things have been happening from oh my gosh Hurricane Helene. I think that was just so devastating and for me. I am such a passionate lover of our planet and to see the direct results of climate change happening in such an extreme way as what happened down there and what's been happening all over our planet with the wildfires and everything like that truly hurts my heart and my soul to the core, like it. It really messes with my brain.

Speaker 1: 5:00

And then I went through a long bout of sickness in my family and we are a family that rarely ever gets sick and you can sometimes hear it a little bit in my throat still, but I ended up getting my first bout of pneumonia, which was certainly far from fun. I am really grateful to have one of the best naturopathic physicians in the whole entire state of Oregon on my team, so she's helping me with some fun supplements, beyond the herbs that I'm already taking, to help make sure that pneumonia isn't just a frequent thing for me here on. But my point being is that that was really stressful for me because I had already had these deadlines I had created for myself within my own business that I wasn't able to meet. There was no way I could because I couldn't speak for more than just a few minutes, and that was stressful to me. I want to show up for my students, I want to be there and do what I'm saying I'm going to do, and I'm also just the kind of person that really I'm addicted to being busy. I know that's something I could work on. But you know, with pneumonia it was that forced rest time and obviously I really really needed it, or it wouldn't have happened, but during the time it was very stressful and then, like coming out of that, it was the election time and I am not happy about the outcome of that.

Speaker 1: 6:34

I am a person who loves natural remedies and I also believe in science and I love how they dance together. I'm also a person who really cares for equal rights for all human beings. I'm concerned about a lot of things coming up and thinking that a person with the track record of our incoming president was elected again is really disturbing for me. I'm not trying to make this a political podcast, don't get me wrong, but life is political. So that's the unfortunate reality. And, anyways, that caused me a lot of stress. And then it moved into a longtime friend and neighbor of mine going missing the week before Thanksgiving. That happened in my very small mountain community. We are a beautiful community of amazing people and the impact of somebody going missing was huge. I will say that she was found on her own property and it is alleged with lots of backup that it was her husband who had taken her life and that has impacted me dramatically.

Speaker 1: 7:55

I don't want to like ruin the vibes of this episode here, but it's important that I share, like what I've been going through managing stress and heartache and loss and grief and and trauma and how we can all manage this with the help of lifestyle choices and herbs and whatnot. And just in honor of that friend and that incredible tragedy, I do want to say that if you are somebody in a domestic abuse or domestic violence situation, please get out. Please get out before it's too late. Gosh, I'm going to cry in this episode. I don't want to cry, but I do want you to be safe and I do want you to care for yourself and I want us all to use the power of plant medicine, the power of Mother Nature, to help us navigate life through its toughest times, and I know that things are going to get a bit more challenging for many people out there in the coming years. You know there's going to be a lot of struggle, and so it's important that we take care of ourselves mentally and physically, and take care of our neighbors also, because stress is one of the top killers in our world.

Speaker 1: 9:22

It is in the top six leading causes of death. It is known as a silent killer, and we can manage this. We can. We can be strong, right, we can use plant medicine. So let's talk a little bit about the science of it and what's really going on. So we've got stress, we've got cortisol. We've got gut health, and understanding how these connect can really empower you to take charge of stress naturally.

Speaker 1: 12:36

So let's talk how, when we experience stress, our bodies release this hormone called cortisol. You may have heard of it. It is part of our natural fight or flight response, and cortisol is really helpful when we're trying to outrun a tiger, which I'm pretty sure none of us are doing these days. But the thing is, in our lives today we have this constant low-level stress mode, whether we're trying to meet work deadlines or we get sick, or we're juggling kids or we're navigating holiday chaos. When our stress hormone cortisol, when those levels stay elevated for too long, it'll throw things out of balance. You might notice these things if you start feeling more tired, maybe you are irritable or having trouble sleeping. It can also make your body prioritize survival tasks over doing things that need to happen, like digestion, which is where the gut comes into play. The elevated cortisol over time can really really mess with our natural ability to rest, recover and feel like ourselves. So this is kind of where it gets.

Speaker 1: 13:56

Even more interesting is that your gut and your brain are in constant communication. They're like total homies, texting each other all day long, and what it's called is the gut brain axis. Maybe you have heard about it, but stress from your brain, stress like worrying about holiday travel or your kids or can you get presents under the tree any of those things that stress can affect your gut and other issues in your gut like poor digestion or maybe inflammation All of that then affects your brain, making you feel even more stressed or anxious. So it's kind of like this recycle the stress and ick of it all kind of situation. And, if you didn't know this already, about 90% of your body's serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that's responsible for happiness, it's the feel-good hormone or neurotransmitter made in your gut. So if you have this deficiency in serotonin, you may feel depressed or feel a large amount of anxiety. So that's why taking care of your gut isn't just about avoiding tummy troubles or losing weight or something along those lines. It's about supporting your overall resilience, to stress, your overall health.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And the good news is that we can use herbs in conjunction with lifestyle to manage stress and cortisol levels. But it's really just one piece of the puzzle, right? So you can pair those herbs with good sleep again, the lifestyle things, balanced nutrition, movement, mindfulness and basically you create this incredible holistic strategy to help your body handle stress better. This is a lot of what we're going to talk about in the community herbalism program. We're going to learn how to help ourselves, of course, but also people in our community, how to manage these things, how to heal in a holistic way where we understand what's going on in the body and then we understand that lifestyle choices that can impact that, as well as what herbs can come along and help every bit of the body, body, mind, soul, spirit, all of it.

Speaker 1: 16:26

So I want you to think about all of it, like, if your stress is this fire, lifestyle and herbs can be this bucket of water to help put it out or keep that fire from spreading further. And at the same time, you need to make sure that you're not throwing more logs on your fire, causing it to rage even bigger. So those logs can be skipping meals or poor choices in your meals or those stupid doom scroll sessions which I am so guilty of getting into. So I feel it's really important that we also respect these herbs and know that they're not the instant fix pill that we're taught about in Western medicine, but they are a big, big, big, big, big support. So the herbs we're going to talk about, herbs like ashwagandha and chamomile and tulsi, are incredible allies, but, again, without the lifestyle choices they're not quite as strong.

Speaker 1: 17:28

So, okay, I feel like I've been rambling a lot. My point is to make sure that you understand how navigating the stress of the world is a big job, but it's worth it because we need to feel good, right. The more we can feel good, the more impact we can make in our own lives, in our children's lives, in the lives of our neighbors, our friends, this planet, all of it. And we can remain more strong. And these herbs are here for us, but they want balance, homeostasis that is a key word in it all. So, okay, I'm getting rambly.

Speaker 1: 18:08

I want to talk about some of the herbs that really helped me, especially during this time of year. I forgot to even mention that, but you know, we're a couple of days away from winter solstice, the shortest day, longest night of the year, and while that's beautiful, I am a person who I must get outside and connect with nature, but during this time of year, my work hours are the daylight hours and it's very hard for me to get outside and get my work done. So one herb that is really really fabulous in helping people during this time of year with things like seasonal affective disorder is an herb like lemon balm, and this herb is a nervane, so it's going to work on the nervous system, gently calming and soothing, while also supporting the digestive system. And one thing I love about it it's also known as nature's sunshine, and during this time of year I live in Oregon not only is it short daylight, but it's often very gray and very rainy, and I could use a few extra doses of sunshine, and lemon balm is really really lovely for that. It actually lifts the mood and helps those that are dealing with anxiety and irritability. Or maybe you have that overactive mind, maybe you're somebody who gets headaches related to stress. This can be really really helpful for you. If you get super irritated or depressed during PMS or your perimenopausal or menopausal, lemon balm can be an extreme ally for you and help you navigate all of that, and it's really really delicious, I will say.

Speaker 1: 19:53

If you want some of the best lemon balm that's not grown by you ever, I would highly, highly recommend getting lemon balm from Oshala Herb Farm. It's next level, like when I used to have my apothecary and I would open up a bag of lemon balm from Oshala Herb Farm. My whole 2,500 square foot space would just permeate the scent of lemon balm everywhere and it was so delightful. I've never seen that from any other suppliers I've gotten it from. So I definitely recommend them because their quality is next level. I love them. I will link to them in the show notes and the broadcast notes of this episode, for sure.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Another thing is like lemon balm is really easy to take into your body. You can make a tincture of it, you can do glycerides Sipping a delicious lemon balm tea is the way to go. I often make popsicles with it. It's a great, great, great herb to have on hand and I highly recommend using some, especially if you do deal with seasonal affective disorder and just get really bummed out during this time of year.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Another herb that I think a lot of people really know for calming the nerves is chamomile. A lot of people are like, oh, chamomile, that's the sleepy time herb or the calming herb, which it totally is, and it's amazing with what it can do to ease anxiety and calm the central nervous system. It's great for somebody who has chronic insomnia. But another cool piece about chamomile is it's one of the herbs that I recommend the most for various digestive issues. So the tummy aches, the anxiety-related tummy aches it is really really delicious. It helps to ease inflammation in the gut. It promotes healthy digestion. It is a bitter herb so it releases bile and digestive enzymes, helping to break down proteins and fats in the body really quite well. So it's really acting in both ways. Remember we talked about that gut, brain access and how the gut is directly related to your mood. So chamomile is a fabulous one. It's another really really delicious one.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Drink it in a tea. My daughter has been grabbing chamomile flowers out of my tea since she could walk and she would just eat them, just eat them straight up, which it's great because this is one of her best herbal allies out there. You can make an herbal honey. You could I think I already said this you could tincture it. Oshala, again another fabulous source of chamomile, and if you want, like the products already made, eclectic herb can be really nice you could rely on Oregon's Wild Harvest, wish Garden Herbs all of these companies that produce fantastic herbal supplements, and I am happy to link to those in the show notes as well, and I am happy to link to those in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Another herb that I love so much is Tulsi, or holy basil, and Tulsi is an incredible powerhouse Like we could have days and days and days of podcasts on the medicinal benefits of this herb. It's also delicious Like I'm drinking Tulsi and a tea right now. It is fabulous for lifting the mood. It also counteracts the negative effects of stress. It helps to prevent elevated cortisol levels. It eases anxiety. It reduces tension headaches. It is very specific again for those that deal with seasonal affective disorder. It is an incredible powerhouse that is known to increase dopamine and serotonin levels. It is amazing. It is truly, truly amazing.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Again, oshala Herb Farm grows this stuff incredible quality. You can also get it, you know. Make it into a honey, make Tulsi syrup, use it as a tincture. Oregon's Wild Harvest has some really high quality capsules. If you're a capsule taker, they are really really fabulous in that way as well.

Speaker 1: 24:20

So I highly recommend using Tulsi if stress is a big thing for you. It helps in so many ways. Oh, it's also adaptogenic, so that means it helps your body adapt to life's various stressors, whether physical, emotional, spiritual. You know all of the above physical, emotional, spiritual. You know all of the above, and then another one that has been an incredible ally for me for many, many years is ashwagandha, and speaking of adaptogens, it is definitely one of those. This is withania somniferum, and I thrive with ashwagandha. It is another adaptogenic herb that helps to balance cortisol and support your ability to handle and adapt to stress right, as the name says, with adaptogen, so it is a nervine as well. So calming and soothing to the nerves.

Speaker 1: 25:14

It is fabulous for reducing anxiety, helping those with ADHD. Maybe you're an overworked and overstressed mother, you have trouble sleeping or you've got way too freaking much on your plate. Hi, you're my friend and I relate to you. If that's you, I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but we do, and while the wise thing would be to take all that extra stuff off of your plate, the reality is sometimes it's not that easy and we have life to lead and we are responsible for other people's lives. We may have work. We may be, you know, a stay at home mom with so many responsibilities. All of that is, you know, it can be challenging. Another nice thing about ashwagandha is it can support adrenal function and it can act as a trope of restorative for stressed out nervous system, for a stressed out nervous system. So I definitely recommend ashwagandha in your life.

Speaker 1: 26:18

It is not an herb that you're like bam. I took ashwagandha and I'm all good. It is one that I love to take on a long-term basis. It can be really nice added with like fatty milk, so like a coconut milk. I like to do ashwagandha in coconut milk as a tea and add in maybe some cinnamon and ginger and honey and decoct all that together. Well, add the honey in later so you don't lose the medicinal properties of a good local raw honey. But that's a really great way to go. You could put it in a chai or something like that, and I actually tincture like a gallon of ashwagandha every year or two and have it on hand so that I can use it for a long time coming. It's really really nice and, again, like I said, it's one of my best friends.

Speaker 1: 27:08

So I hope you can take a deep breath. I hope this episode gives you some hope. There I go Hope in twice, three times now in one sentence or paragraph, but I just want you to know that we can manage this. We can stay strong even when we feel weak. It is okay to accept those times when we feel weak and it is okay to turn to our plant friends that support us in our nervous system and in the gut.

Speaker 1: 27:42

So those herbs like we talked about today lemon balm, chamomile, tulsi all specific both for the nervous system and for the digestive system, adding in that ashwagandha as well, such a powerhouse herb. Also, make sure you are eating nutrient dense foods. Get as many colors as you can into your meals. Now's the time of year when we're relying more on the root vegetables and we're bringing in warming spices and herbs like ginger, like cinnamon, all these great herbs that are also phenomenal for the digestive system. And then I highly, highly, highly recommend that you are getting probiotics into the body to feed the good gut bugs, whether that be through supplements, which I highly recommend getting in from Fullscript. If you want, I do have 15% off of high quality probiotics and other supplements through Fullscript. I will link to that. If you create a Fullscript account through us, you will get 15% off. Another great way to get probiotics into your body is through fermented foods.

Speaker 1: 28:57

So using all of that is really, really important and it is really important to think about healing as the whole person, and that is exactly what we're going to be walking through in the Community Herbalist Certification Program, which officially kicks off in January. So this is where we're going to learn how to help people ourselves first, of course, and to also help people in our community. So if you are that person who has been using herbs for a while and you know that they work, and you know that they're really cool, and you've got your co-workers and your friends starting to send you messages like, hey, this is going on, what do I do? But you're not quite sure what to do, this program is going to build the foundation for you to understand how to help those people best, how to choose the right herbs for that unique individual, how to suggest a lifestyle protocol that meets them where they're at, because sometimes you know it's really hard to eliminate everything from our lives and spend an hour meditating a day and then an hour outside, and all of that. So, like, how can you meet these people where you're at they're at and support them through this holistic healing process and also have an incredible knowledge of the herbs that are going to help different body systems heal different ailments, so on and so forth? I'm really excited about that because you know, I host this podcast, because I believe there needs to be an herbalist in every home, and that's so true that belief will never, ever go away. We also need that really confident healer in every home or every community and in every home. But every community needs somebody that has that level of confidence that knows how to guide somebody in the process of healing themselves. So I think it's more important now than ever and that's exactly what we're going to do inside of that program. So if you are interested in being that herbal healer in your community, I would love to support you and guide you on that journey. I will post a link to the application page Super duper simple application. I just want to make sure that we're in alignment and the program is going to help you achieve your goals and all of those kinds of things. So, yeah, I would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 31:34

Was this episode helpful for you? Do you feel like maybe you can take some of the information from this episode to implement it into your life and give yourself some of the love and self-care that you deserve, especially during the holiday season? I really especially during the holiday season. I really really hope that it does and if it does, I would love to hear from you Also. Hey, you know this is probably the last episode coming out in 2025, I think, or sorry, 2024.

Speaker 1: 32:10

We're heading into 2025. And I would love to hear from you what episodes do you want to hear about? What kind of topics, what kind of questions would you like answered on the show? Shoot me a DM in Instagram or TikTok, or message me through email, which would be buddingherbalist at theherbalistpathcom. I would love, love, love to hear from you and know what you want to hear on this show.

Speaker 1: 32:41

So, thanks again for listening to me and for tuning in to this episode of the herbalist path. I want you to know that you are an amazing human being. You deserve to feel great. You are doing the best that you can do under the circumstances that you have and keep doing it. Keep doing it and as you keep doing it, don't forget to love you. Okay, thank you so much again for tuning in. I really love you and appreciate you for being here. So have a safe and wonderful holiday season and you'll hear from me in 2025. Bye.

Speaker 1: 33:33

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the Herbalist Path. Being on this journey with you is absolutely incredible. If you dig this episode. Please leave me a review on your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends so that together we can make herbalism Hashtag spread like wildflowers. On another note, I must mention that, while I know you're getting some good info here, it's important to remember that this podcast is purely for entertainment and educational purposes and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment. While the information in this podcast is absolutely relevant, herbs work differently for each person and each condition. That's why I recommend you work with a qualified practitioner, whether that be another herbalist, a naturopath or your doctor. So thank you again. I am truly honored that you're tuning into these episodes and on the path with me to make sure that there's an herbalist in every home. Again, don't forget to share this episode with your friends so that we can make herbalism Hashtag spread like wildflowers.