Hello there.

Welcome to the Herbcast, the podcast from Herbal

Reality, delving into the plant powered world of

herbalism.

So do you know your echinacea from your eleutherococcus

or your polyphenol from your polysaccharides? Whether

you're a budding herbalist, an inquisitive health professional,

or a botanical beginner, herbcast is here to

inform and inspire you on your journey to integrating herbs in our

everyday lives. So settle down, turn up,

and let's start today's episode of the Herbal Reality

herbcast.

Well, it gives me great pleasure today to welcome

Simon Mills. Simon, it's great to have you here

and we've become colleagues first and

then friends over the years. And

Simon, you've got a remarkable career in herbal medicine

and just looking forward to talking to you about it all today. I'm not going to give

you a long introduction because we'd be here for ages,

but I'd love to just, you know, hear today your

story of what brought you to becoming a herbalist and then

some of your experiences and your wisdom

and guidance you've got for us today for the future really.

So yeah, how did you become a herbalist, Simon? What brought you to it

all?

Thank you Sebastian. And thank you for the opportunity to sort of go

back over my life. I ah, often

think that if you ask a herbalist how they became a

herbalist, it would always be an interesting story because,

you know, it's not a simple career path. You don't get offered it

at school as an option. So everyone

must have a very interesting story. Certainly

mine is I grew up as a nomad, my

father was posted to various places around the world,

and we moved to New Zealand in when I was about

nine and had a fruit farm. So I

grew up with plants and commercial

development thereof. Apples and pears

and oranges, and grapefruits and nectar greens and

so on. We were the first people to grow Chinese

gooseberries, which was a failure because we

hadn't thought of the word kiwi fruit for them. But

that was the sort of world that I grew up with and managed

to get an entry into Cambridge from New Zealand, which was a

sort of big deal. and that incidentally meant that

we had a really interesting journey across

from New Zealand to Cambridge, which involved taking a bus

from Mumbai all the way through to

London through places you can't go anymore, you know, like

Afghanistan and Persia and Iran and

Iraq, the west bank and so on. So it was

A wonderful learning experience. And you arrive

in London in the 60s, you know, which was really

the most fertile creative environment,

creative decade of all, I'm sure. and

you know, radical things going on and great

cultural and other developments. And I went up to

Cambridge to study sciences, natural sciences.

But as I was reading through the Cambridge

book, I realised that you could do medical

sciences as a degree. That's

an option they gave you. And I was really interested in how

humans worked. So I did physiology and

remain an avid physiologist

ever since. I just love understanding and working

with how the body works. and I

was never interested in diseases, I was never of pathology.

And so the time came for me to, you know,

finish my degree and thought, what am I going to do next?

And in those days it was quite normal not to go

and take a job, you know. So I, I wandered

around the world, bumped into some

traditional cultures in North Africa

and in Central America,

spent some time in a village in Mexico

and just saw people treating

themselves with plants

and you know, that sowed a little seed.

So I came back, had a small legacy and, and decided

that I would go into what was then a very

radical idea, of going to self

sufficiency, small holding, you know, the idea that you can go

and live off your, off the land by yourself.

And went to Cornwall and looking for a crop

and an old uni friend pointed me to a

neighbour who was growing herbs as a herb nursery. So I

thought I'll grow some herbs and you

know, then the penny dropped and I discovered

that there was a place you could study herbs. So

I studied at the National Institute of Medical Herbalists.

And because, I'd done medicine before, I sort of went through it

fairly rapidly. My first

interview was with Fred Fletcher Hyde, who had

carried the torch of herbal medicine through from

the war years. And by the time I'd

arrived there there was about, I think 20

people calling themselves herbalists in the

UK and they were all over 50.

It was a dying profession and he was the

last of those, that generation

and he was a God fearing, Christian. And

he asked me first of all whether I was and

I declined to answer

that one. But he then said, well, you do know

that herbal medicine is the only God

given medicine, everything else is man

made, so it's the only one that's really true. And

you know, he quoted the Bible, the Lord hath created

medicines out of the earth and he that is wise should not

abhor them, which I used as a title in my book. But the

idea that herbal medicine was

the true, so I now call it the first

Medicine has stuck from that

time and has infected me to the point where you know,

I genuinely and sincerely believe

that herbal medicine is the

basis of a rarely fundamental

healthcare option that we've neglected.

So that was where the seed was sown and I became a

practitioner in 1977

and have been in practise ever since.

The other thing that really attracted me about herbs was that it

was fundamentally a physiological

medicine. Conventional medicine is all about

diseases and fixing diseases, whereas herbs

allow you a way of working with the

functions of the body, nudging self

correcting physiological functions. That's something that I was

rarely quick to pick up as a

really attractive part of herbs. It took the

high ground. You know, this was definitely something that was worth

working for. So having got,

got that commitment I thought well the only thing to do is to,

is to pick it up from this small group

of the last dozen practitioners

and build it into something that was much

bigger. And a guy who had qualified

just before me was Heinz Elstra who was

given the job of taking over the education department of the

NIMH and promptly

set up a school in Tunbridge Wells

then. And I spent two

days a week with Hein for the next six,

seven years commuting from. I'd

moved to Exeter from Cornwall and

commuted to Tunbridge Wells two days a week and

taught physiology and other subjects at

the, at this new school. And so you know, together

we plotted all sorts of things into the wee hours.

We would usually stay awake until 2

or 3 in the morning drinking his leftovers,

from his. He had a spirit, he had an alcohol licence for making

tinctures so there was always a 5% wastage

that you could have. So he used to make wonderful

liqueurs which we used to quaff

past midnight. Anyway, that was

where you know, we thought about how we

would get herbal medicine into, into

shape, with proper education, research,

professional standards and so on.

And so I became president of The NIMH in

1983, did about eight years in that

job and then was a founder chair of the Council

of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. So we started making common

ground with acupuncturists and with

osteopaths, homoeopaths and setting up

professional standards through the 80s. So that

was where I really cut my teeth.

I m just love the image of you catching that bus in

Mumbai travelling across

Asia and through to the uk. To

really find your heart

in, in herbalism. But also the fact that it was so

few practitioners, Simon, you know, you know, it really

was. It had been worn down, hadn't it? By that stage there were

a few stalwarts studying and practising.

Well, this, this is a life lesson I could pass on to

anybody. If you really are a small fish, find

a very small pond, and then you can make yourself into a

big fish.

Interesting metaphor. Well, I think, I think

the, the. Yes, the small pond found a big

fish to expand, Simon, for the potential

that was there. I mean, you know, if the history of medicine is

anything, it's the history of herbalism up to the last

hundred years. Anyway, I'd love to explore a bit more this

idea. Your love of physiology and

pharmacology perhaps as well. And

you know, how you see herbs working and how

they can contribute to the needs of

today.

Yes, it is fundamental

and I keep on

myself and to anybody who will listen, that herbs.

Herbal medicine is different from

the conventional approach to medicine. And it's not

different because we made it up in the bath. It's different because

humans have been doing it that way for

millennia. So going back to the core

does involve ditching quite a lot of stuff that we

assume in conventional medicine.

and m. The main one really is

that the body is self correcting and that you

don't go and fix things

by what you can do. But the best

way of maintaining or promoting health is

to help the body to do that, to nudge it. I

use the word nudge a lot and I truly

feel that herbs, are the ideal

nudging medicines. They

nudge the body to better physiological

activity and they're working

functionally, but they're performance enhances or

whatever way you want to put it, rather than things that

fix diseases. So, you know, when someone says

chamomile is good for a headache or stomachache, a little

fairy dies in me because I'm saying, no, that's not

chamomile. Chamomile helps you to,

relax, it helps the digestion to work better. it

has all sorts of complementary functions because it's

a complex material and it's got a personality. You

know, the homoeopaths have a similar idea that their

medicines have a Persona, and a

profile. And I think we do too, you know. And

so in teaching herbs, I always talk

about the herbs as having a personality. Get to know the

herb and maybe just use it on its own,

so that you Understand it, Galen used to call it

proofing, you know, where you take the herb

yourself and learn about it

and its qualities. so yeah, herbs are

ah, I see as physiological

remedies helping the body or to nudge the body

to performing better. But the other thing is that I think

that herbal medicine is a medicine of

qualities rather than of quantities.

So we're very used in medicine to talk about, you know,

the odds of this and the stats of that and, and you

know, what your chances of doing this, that or the other.

And you know, I always say that that

is the story of the crowd, you know,

that's taking 100 people and saying 50%

of them are going to do this and the other. It doesn't, it doesn't help

us to understand what's going on inside.

So that the the way that we understood

herbs originally was through their qualities,

their tastes, their smells, the impact

they had when you swallowed them or tasted them.

And that was how they were classified. And the

ones I think have the greatest power

are, to rework

those original insights so that

they become tools to

change the body. My most

rewarding work is still with

people who come to see me, with illnesses and health

problems. And it's a huge privilege

to take a very often complex story,

very puzzling story. People are very distressed

by diseases, they can't understand. The

doctors have partial help with. And

to be able to link them all together

within one person's story

and then come up with a strategy

that may have nothing to do with the symptoms

but which comes out of the way in which these

things interact. That's, that's a

medicine of qualities. It's a medicine of

as a physiology. It's, it's working with

function. So it is very, very

different. And I think we suffer

if herbs are ah, compared with

beta blockers or omeprazole, or

antihypertensives. Those are doing

different jobs. Ours do something quite

different and we should be proud and bang on about it

and shout that as much as we can. And you

know, things like herbal reality and so

on is a great platform for getting some of these

stories across and put. And setting our stall

out to display our herbs

as they deserve.

M. I love that idea. You're talking about how

herbs nudge, and

influence the patterns of health and

how it sounds like when you work with your clients,

you act as a teacher describing to them

about the qualities of their life or the qualities,

the patterns that they exude.

What role do you think Herbalism can really play in empowering

people's health and in helping

educate people about what it means to have

good digestion or to sleep well and the small things

they can do on a daily basis.

Yeah, that takes me back to a critical

part of my early, development. In the 70s, I bumped into a couple

of people who had a huge influence on my life.

One of them was E.F. ernst Schumacher,

who wrote a book at the 1973 called Small is

Beautiful Economics as if People Met

it is the subtitle of the book. And he was

influenced by Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, and

Buddhist economics, as he called it. And really

was questioning where

particularly Western society was going economically

and societally. by

saying that a, we were threatening,

the integrity, the sustainability of our planet. We

were roaring away. This is in the 60s and 70s. He was saying

this, you know, that we were unsustainable. but more

importantly in his case, we were

losing human autonomy, human

dignity. You know, he had the classic image

of. In India, for example, you know, you can

either bring a factory in to make

sandals and sell them around the

world, or you can tool up

local economies, villages and so on to make

sandals, in their own fashion,

and it's just as good quality. But the

people concerned have control over their own lives. They

had that autonomy. That was a huge impact on me, the idea that

you return, the ownership back to

people rather than give it to institutions. And

the other person. I was very fortunate to meet

Schumacher as well. I had a wonderful conversation with him, and that was

really powerful for me. But the other person had

even more in, contact with was Ivan

Illich, who wrote the key

iconoclastic book in the 1970s

called Medical Nemesis, which really threw

a spanner at the way in which medicine was

going even then, let alone now. still a

very good read. He was the one, very

incisively, who, challenged the idea that

medicine was best done outside your

own world. Before he wrote Medical

Nemesis, he wrote a book called Tools of Conviviality, which is

about giving people tools to fashion their own

world and their own community and their own, rather than impose

it up your tools from above. and that

was a huge influence on me. So the, notion that I

have is that herbal medicine are the

ideal medicines to

empower people to give you meaningful

tools that, you can fashion

your own health with. No other material

does that. Certainly conventional pharmaceuticals are

given to you. You take them passively.

with herbs you have an opportunity to

rarely work out your Own

health. So they are the ultimate self

care tools. And, you know, self care to me is

a major part of what I do. I'm, at least as

interested in inspiring people to look after themselves as

in talking with fellow professionals. You know, I think

herbal medicine is the medicine of the people.

And it fits the Schumacher and Illich notion that

you give power back

to the individual, to the family, to the community.

it's, it's inherently empowering.

I love that, Simon. The idea that, there

is a, you know, there's a knowledge in nature, if you like, there's a wisdom

in nature and it's there and accessible to us if we're lucky enough

to be taught and, you know, exposed to it from a,

from a young age. A bit like we are, with the foods we eat and the

personal hygiene we have and taking rest,

you know, do we want to trail over the history of why it's

happened? But what are some of the solutions to the

future going ahead? You know, how can people become more empowered

and learn more?

Well, I question this a lot. I think, you know, why is it

that we're still a small group of people talking about

this, and the wider community, the

wider society doesn't seem interested. And I think it's

a fundamental thing that when you're ill, you feel very vulnerable,

you know, you know, when it hurts, it hurts and you just want

someone to come and fix it. You know, I sometimes used

to say that in a way, wouldn't

care if my dentist was, you know, a

member of the SS as long as he fixed my bloody teeth if

they were painful. You know, you just want someone

to come and fix it. and most of

us feel vulnerable when we're ill.

And so the idea that someone can take it over and say,

don't worry, we'll look after it, is a

hugely comforting

option, that we now have in modern society. So

the idea that we're going to tell people, oh, well, actually that's not as

good as you going out and fixing it and working it out for

yourself is a tough one for a lot of people.

So I think, you know, there's about 10% probably

of the population who's up for this at the moment,

and we can, we can encourage them to

do more of this. but, you know, we're seeing it

now, aren't we? You know, it's less easy to go and

see a doctor. It's. You have to wait longer even for an

ambulance these days. you know, there'll come a

time, quite likely, when more and more

people will have to do what we've

been doing here. And so I think our job is

to get the tools ready, and to get it in good

shape so that it's available for people when they need

it. and one of the great things of working with

pukka over these last five years has been to

see how it is possible to

spread a message widely

about the power of plants and organic plants particularly.

and that's been a huge comfort in my later years to

actually think, you know, you can spread the

word much more widely. It's not just a few of us in a

corner.

It feels like the, the time is ripe, doesn't

it, in a way, having been a bit quiet, should we say for a

few years that people are open to taking

more charge of their health? And, you know, it's not

100% necessarily, is it? You can take charge of your health up to a certain

point. And of course we all need professional medical

advice at certain times in our life and that may be from a

conventional medical doctor or a herbalist or acupuncturist,

wherever we choose to go. But it feels like there are some

basic principles one can

include in your daily life. And I

know from all your, your writing and teaching career

that that's gone from the simple to the very

detailed. I just wondered whether it's worth talking about some

of the, the basics that you see that

people can implement in their health. You know, what are some of the day

to day things people could, could include?

Well, and I start with the plants. And

indeed part of my political manoeuvring,

has been to use the word plant

as often as I can, rather than herbs because herbs

tend to close shutters down, you know, so if

you start talking about plants it opens up conversations a

bit more. and of course plants start with foods.

So a lot of what we see as health

values in our, herbs, are actually the health values of the

plants in our diet. So, you know,

often we can start the conversation with just, well,

almost always we can start the conversation with just talking about the

value of, you know, polyphenols and colours

and plants and fibre. In fact, that's

a good way in for us in the conversation. You know, if I'm talking

to doctors, I'll start with that because that's something that, that

they can immediately relate to.

so, yes, food, good eating.

And the other part of all this for me

is how it connects us with Our, Earth, it's

earthing. Another influence on me was

Satish Kumar

in Schumacher Golledge. A nice,

combination there, who writes about the

Earth Pilgrim and about how we connect with

our Earth. and of course, you know, my book was called out of

the Earth. You know, the connection with our,

with the ground and with nature

is fundamental to herbs. So,

you know, starting with walking in nature, getting out,

doing a bit of connection with plants and nature,

growing your own or even window box.

Often it's just those fundamentals.

Eating well, of course, sleeping well,

you know, those are the two big health issues. And that

may be a case where we do need to step in

almost straight away with some herbs. And

then, you know, we've written a lot on self

care, but it's learning how to

recognise symptoms not as

threats but as signposts, you know, so

how to read things better,

and not be frightened by them, but see them

as friends.

I love that. It's almost like the language of health, isn't it? Is

how can you learn to use,

the feelings and signs and symptoms you have

as an indication for how to adjust your diet or your

exercise or your sleep.

Another formative influence on me, which I must

share, was when I was in Cornwall, with

my herb nursery and was self sufficient and we

had goats. And one of them, the

mother goat, was called Emily. And every

day I used to take her out and put her on a long lead

as she would then spend her time on the Cornish

hedges. And watching her

I realised that in fact she wasn't just hoovering

up, you know, as you would imagine a cow would do, just

grass, would hoover up the grass. but was

being extremely selective and

picking plants very discreetly. and it was

only a little while later that I realised that actually she

was choosing what I now use as medicines.

And where did she learn that? You

know, there was no book there.

And all that Emily was doing

was using her nose, she was nosing her

way, knowing her way through the materia

medica and fine tuning her

own internal

physiology intuitively.

And, this idea of intuiting,

is, is to me important, you know, the notion

that instead of analysing and breaking

things down, you intuit the holes. This is

what Brian Goodwin, another colleague of mine

from, from Schumacher as well, called,

the science of qualities. I said I'd like to be like

Emily when I grew up. You know, I want to be able

to just feel

your way through. So, when I'm with A

patient. I'm asking, them how it

feels all the time rather than

what the doctor said they've got. You know, what

actually is the sense? What is the symptom? How

does, how does it hit you? Is it. Does it get better

with hot or cold? Does it, you know, all those sort of things, other

things that guide us, aren't they?

Yeah. How can we sniff out what's good for us?

Yeah, yeah.

How can we sense,

you know, it feels like we've moved in this, you

know, this direction. If we're talking about nature and the

earth and the insight and intuition of animals towards

their own health through this sort of

scientific revolution, evolution

to the, the place we are in the world today which,

which feels full of hope for natural medicine and full of

opportunity. Although we are, we are still

so small. I know some of the work you've done with the Golledge of

Medicine and in social prescribing and some of those

areas, where there seems to be a greater

move towards more social health care

on a wider sense. I wondered if we could explore a bit more

about the future in a way. And some of your hopes

and some of your vision for how we can really

help society's health improve in the future.

Yes. On a political front. Yes. well, one

of my other activities was to get involved with

doctors and healthcare workers generally. Ah, lovely

guy called Michael Dixon, who is quite a

big noise in general practise, as a colleague of

mine nearby, work with him. And we set up and

designed a project funded by the Department of Health to look at

self care and family practise. That was the title of the

project in 2009 started. Part of the

conditions was that we brought what

the NHS calls clinical stakeholders. So the heads of

the colleges of medicines of various sorts and nurses

and so on. And, so we prepared a

paper to explain to them why

self care was useful, even though there was

very little evidence base and in fact there was often

used for things that they weren't properly diagnosing. In other words,

sort of defeating everything we know about evidence based

medicine. So we prepared this rarely and we were

sort of chewing our fingernails thinking this is going to be thrown

out. And it was funny that within

a, couple of minutes or so of our presentation, one of them said,

oh, you mean self care? Oh, that's not our

problem. We don't need evidence for that. As long as

it's safe and doesn't interfere with proper medicine, then go

for it. Even homoeopathy. Except if

it's self care. And I got it. If

you take this out of the

doctor's territory and

don't challenge them on their own turf,

then it's fine. So suddenly there

was a huge opportunity to talk about herbs

as self care tools rather than as

challenges to the medical hegemony.

So social prescription emerged out of that project. Actually,

in fact we now say that we created in

that project what is now called the link

worker. the idea that instead of the doctor giving you a

prescription of, conventional medicine, they say

go and see somebody who will then guide you through the

local yoga classes and the carting group and so on.

And that's what now called the link worker. And there's thousands

of them paid for by the NHS now. Ah,

and so we've seen a radical transformation

and it's because we found

a way around the medical blocks, that

we found, ah, a way that worked

with people's needs rather than

creating another professional

over Lord. and I think

that's really exciting. So the idea that we

become guides, I call them health

guides to people who are looking to improve their

health. And we bring our expertise as

teachers, as guys, a

physician who was originally a teacher. So we

are recreating that really exciting new

role where we support people

in their personal choices and their own

self care. And social prescribing is a political

way in which that becomes acceptable within the

NHS and other. And so around the world now people are

taking to social prescribing like hotcakes.

So it's a very exciting opportunity we

have self care likewise. And so that

brings us back to what is the role of the herbal

practitioner. And you know,

we are now excitingly involved in this new herbal

alliance where we're bringing practitioners

from a wide range of disciplines and traditions

into one conversation, and

giving them hopefully, an increasingly effective

voice. I think that voice will

be to say we are working with

the community, we're the ones that are going to help

people to get better. we've got

expertise, we've done our 4, 5, 6, 8, 10

years of experience here and we can

bring this to the party. but we're not going to set

ourselves up as new doctors.

You know, we're not going to compete with gps or we're not

going to say we're as good as we're different.

And I think we have a huge

prospect of helping people to

discover their health then their

connections with nature, their

sustainable lifestyles, all

things that we can help guide.

Well, I think that, you know, it's so exciting that idea of

the community basis in a way, how herbalists can

work. I know the word community is used a

bit loosely in a way, but, you know, how can it really work

with individuals, families, generation to

generation and also, also, you know, more widely

across the community as, ah, educators

really, and that ability to teach

the fundamentals of life. So you know, when, when I asked you what

are the things you work with a client, you know, they're all really simple things, aren't. they, it's

your diet, sl, exercise. And

of course, herbalists have got very special knowledge of a range of

specialist plants as well to help influence health.

So I really think that's an exciting vision.

There was always, there was always the wise woman in every village. And

although we're not of that gender, we,

might take that role of, of being the

person you go to when you need a bit of extra help.

I mean, taking it a little bit further in terms of

the, the vision of the future. Simon, you

know, obviously we stand in this nature crisis at

the moment. And you know, I've been an admirer

of your work as you've looked at the microbiome and these

ideas of the being a wider planetary

biome. As we're talking about communities, maybe we should

talk about the community inside us for a bit. I'd love to

explore how that work

you've, you know, that's evolved over the years for

you, is influencing your thinking about how

herbalism works and its opportunity for

improving health. It feels like there's an interface there between

the tradition of herbalism and the wisdom it

holds.

Yeah.

And the cutting edge of science and the insights

it's finding about us being a part of a

whole ecosystem in a way.

Yeah.

And just to throw in another blend, you know, we've got, you know,

the whole idea of how we grow our food and organic

farming in there as well. So this idea of caring for the

whole ecosystem, love to just explore that.

For a few years. There's a very high

ground there too, because

we've grown up thinking of science as

reductionist and breaking things down and being very

clever at that. But there is a completely opposite view, which

is in the ascendant in most areas of

human activity, except medicine, strangely, which is

the notion of complex systems, complex living

systems, ecosystems. And it's

obviously in all environmental science, but it's also in

economics, in history and physics. And most

disciplines have now adopted the notion of

complex systems as the fundamental principle of

life. And in complex systems you do

have diversity. You have Complexity,

you have interactions between the

participants of the system. The system itself

emerges out of these interactions. I

mentioned a, ah, colleague of mine, Brian Goodwin at Schumacher, who was

originally at Open University and is a biophysicist.

he's left us now, but he was one

of the people who was at the forefront of

complexity theory and you know, he worked with,

with ants and little small ant

colonies and he was able to show how

the colony would grow and

pulse almost like a living being with just

the net outcome of the individual interactions of each

ant. And each ant had what, one of two

ways that when they met each other they would either in effect approve

or disapprove. And out of those interactions

the whole colony became

an organism, a living organism. And it was

a model that you can see through all living

biomes. So we now know of course that the soil

is an enormously complex biome with all

sorts of levels of life there which you tinker

with at your peril. And we have been tinkering with it. So the

soil is vastly denatured around the world

because we've been treating it badly, we haven't been

restoring its inner life. And

so we see the real threat to our livelihoods

in the depletion of the soil. And we now working

very hard with organic farming and others

ways to build the soil to be

more sustainable. And the

same principle increasingly

seems to apply to the biome that

lives within us, particularly in the

gut, the gut microbiome, which

seems to have all the same properties.

We've found all sorts of ways of working with microbiome. We give

them probiotics, which are

new organisms and yoghurts and things that we hope

might replenish some of the ones that are there.

Tough call because you have to get through the stomach

first. but then we have prebiotics, which is

the idea that you feed the

microbiome with the right sort of

nourishment and out of that you grow

a better biome. And that is much closer to

the idea of manure feeding the soil,

replenishing the soil rather than throwing

fertiliser on it. So I like the idea of the

microbiome being our inner garden

where we tend it in the same way the good

organic gardener would tend a garden.

So yeah, the notion of the biome, the

notion that we really do need to move to

organic ways of growing and

applying that internally as well as

to our immediate environment, that I think is

very important.

M M and are there any Particular herbs

that you found, more relevant

than others in their impact on the microbiome

or just generally interested

in how they interface?

Well, the amazing thing we're discovering

is that we've been awed by the

probiotics and the yoghurts and then by the prebiotics and the

Jerusalem artichokes and then parsnips and the carrots and so

on, and the cereals. But now we can

introduce the notion of postbiotics

that we're increasingly finding that many of our

herbs actually engage in the

conversation further down the system.

they invent what we call cross talk between the

microbiome and the rest of us. And there's this

constant communication that goes on. And

herbs with like polyphenols, all the

flavonoids and anthracyanins and so on,

things like cocoa and red, wine and so

on, all play a part as postbiotics

in helping to shape and

help the microbiome to form itself. So

almost all the things that we think of as good foods

now, stepping up further and further into

this way of influencing the

microbiome. but you know, I've got to give a plug

to a, herb that you introduced me to, which is

triphala, you know, which is

as we have learned, the

most valuable remedy in Asian

medicine, at least its various components

and almost unknown in the west, but

almost perfectly designed to

help maintain gut

health. So you know, the more we can

big up triphala and get the world

to see its values, the better.

Probably the most popular herbal formula in the world.

Exactly.

They seem to know about it over in the, over in the West. Well, I

love the fact that we've been having a conversation about, you know,

your life as a herbalist and about the

language of the earth in a way.

And then how you've finished

by talking about there's actually a conversation

going on inside our bodies when this

interface, this cross talk, this crosstalk happens. And

I, for me that really sums it up that it really is

about a conversation. You know, how do we get on with

our patients, other herbalists, other medical

professionals, society at large I think is through having

a conversation and really raising the

awareness of the

power of plants, but also how accessible

they are to people and how affordable

they are in terms of a resource for not just improving health, but

making your day to day life better.

Yeah, it's a useful point to make that we don't want

to put this out of reach of people. And when

I Started in practise in Devon all those years ago.

My main clients, my main patients were people from

the Midlands who had retired

to Devon and who had grown up

with hers. because herbal medicine in the UK was at its strongest

in the Midlands industrial. It was a post

industrial phenomenon, in towns. And so

a lot of people who used to retire were

expecting to find a herbalist nearby and would look me

up in the Yellow Pages and say, do you do herbs?

And, you know, just expect me to fix them

and all their needs. So I was being their

general practitioner and it reminded me that, you

know, A, they weren't expecting to be charged very much,

and B, this was very much, and in that sense a working

class provision, you know,

as it was during the Industrial Revolution.

so we really do need to return to the

idea that this should not be a privileged

thing, we should make this accessible

to as many as we can. And when people say, well, good

eating costs much, much more and, you know,

that, you know, we're talking to the, you know, top

15% of the population who can afford it, I

just remind people that if you're in a villager in

India, you know, you're eating food that

is basically simple,

foods with spices and lots and lots and lots and lots of

spices, which is important, but it's for pittance.

You don't need to spend money

on good medicine, good health, if you

just rethink it.

I couldn't agree more. It is accessible. It does need a bit of

a paradigm shift in one's priorities in life

about the value of things, I think, isn't it? About

the worth they have. And

they are incredibly precious, the plants that we have in

the world. We know that there is a, pressure on,

ecosystems, but it can still be made very

affordable through including, you know, turmeric,

fennel, ginger or some, you know, very affordable, spices

to include in it on a daily basis in your life

and have, you know, significant

benefits on, on all these factors of health that we've been talking

about.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned turmeric because that is probably the one

that, you know, the single herb

above all that I've adopted as the

avatar, as the, one herb that

almost covers all the bases, including

in the gut, where it's most, where it spends most

of its action. So, and as you say,

it's as cheap as chips or cheaper,

and, you know, has such huge

health potential.

It's a remarkable plant, isn't it? And I think you can See, when you get

a plant like turmeric that meets so many of

the pressing modern health needs

in terms of inflammation, degenerative cognitive,

function, et cetera, et cetera, it, really does

meet that need between food and medicine as well.

And I think that's such an interesting interface, isn't it? And,

and is, I think, one of the reasons why herbalism

struggles a bit, because it crosses over into so many

different realms that it can be a cup

of tea, it can be in your food, or, or it can be a

medicine, depending on the dosage and the quantity

and the, and the need. I think

that's part of the challenge is, as you alluded to earlier,

this complexity that is within

herbalism, the diversity that is there. It really

is a whole health programme really

available to you through the different routes that you might

adopt. And I'm so glad

that you've fallen in love with some of these

herbs over your career, because

in Europe we all often start off with, I don't know, ah,

dandelion and elderflower and nettle, and they become

extremely good friends.

Dandelion is the other great strength. Never discount

dandelion. Interestingly,

another theme, is that dandelion is used almost

everywhere in the world, or

very close related species for almost exactly the same

thing. So even among the Maoris

in New Zealand, they have a variety of dandelion,

which they use for very much the same reasons that we do.

so it's not

culturally imposed. This is something that comes out of the

plants. People rediscover it time and time again

from that, original experience that they

have of the plant when they first take it.

So that's another great reassurance, isn't it, that

we don't need to reinvent or

invent any wheels here. This is already there. All

we have to do is open up our senses.

M. I've so enjoyed our conversation,

Simon. It's such a privilege to hear

your insights. You're so,

humble, but still passionate and

enthusiastic for the, for the future of herbalism.

I really, really have enjoyed the conversation.

Well, thank you for giving me the chance.

Yeah, thank you so much for, for being with us. I love hearing

your stories. We could carry on for ages and

I'm sure we'll, we'll have another conversation soon. So

thank you so much.

Thank you, Sebastian.

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