Optimized Hormone Health + Tonic Herbalism @ Next|Health

TRANSCRIPT:

- So yes, you guys excited? All right, so now it's my honor to introduce to you the Willy Wonka of health and wellness and super food chocolates, Sage Dammers of Addictive Wellness.

Thank you. Hi, everybody, thanks so much. Thanks so much to everyone for taking the time on this beautiful summer evening and coming and spending it indoors when there's beautiful sunsets to watch, but we've got a beautiful place here for everybody as well, so thanks to everybody here for taking the time and coming out. This is really a pleasure to be able to spend this evening with you all, and we're gonna be talking tonight a lot about hormones. This is something that is so simple yet so powerful, and it affects every minute of every day of our lives whether we realize it or not, and in most cases nobody realizes it.

So I have a bit of background in chocolate making, as you guys have probably been tasting hopefully and enjoying, but I've had a lot of passion for well over a decade going back into my teens for natural health and nutrition, and just whatever could make the body perform at a better level and get you closer to being able to live you ultimate life experience. And for me I realized along the way that hormones are a key part of this because they're kind of the master switches of your health. You can get a lot of things right downstream. You can be taking some of the right vitamins maybe, and you could be getting enough sleep and getting a few of these pieces right downstream, but if upstream your hormones are not in the right place, and you're not doing all the right things in terms of lifestyle and diet and nutrition for these hormones to really be thriving, it's gonna affect everything downstream.

It's like if you are trying to make a call on your phone, right? And you're dialing the right number and you're saying the number is right, the number is right, but your phone's in airplane mode, something's wrong. It's just not gonna work. You could have the right number every time, but the call's not gonna go through because the master switch is turned off. That's how hormones work. That's how things like testosterone and oxytocin and estradiol, estriol, estrone, these are all master switches that if you get them right, it kind of has this cascade effect of everything downstream getting into the right place without you even having to worry about it. So you may have all these different symptoms, and you can go after it in sort of a western model where we're treating symptoms, and you can even do it in a naturalesque way, taking certain vitamins, certain supplements, certain things for a symptom here and there. But if you go upstream, sort out the hormones, oftentimes a lot of this downstream stuff tends to work itself out.

Now the biggest enemy that we deal with when it comes to hormone health has to be stress, and this is something we just have an abundance of in the modern world. And here's why this is the problem, and don't worry. I'm not just gonna talk to you guys for the next half hour about why stress is so bad. We're actually gonna get into some solutions on how to deal with it because the last thing you need when you're stressed is for somebody to come up and say "stop stressing", because then you just wanna punch them in the face, right? Because that's not a solution. So when you're stressed, you produce a hormone called cortisol, and you produce adrenaline. And these are things that are evolutionarily designed to help you survive really crazy situations, right?

If you come around the corner, and there's a bear, you want that cortisol because it's gonna help you really move. If you're threatened by your neighboring cave man who wants to take over your territory, and you need to fight, you want that cortisol because it's gonna help you smash his face in with your club. But in our modern world where often we get in these loops of stressing about things that don't have immediate solutions, or that we can't physically react to, we end up in this chronic situation where we're always producing this cortisol, always producing this cortisol because we're always feeling that we're sort of in imminent danger because we have so many things going on in our lives, right? And the reason that this becomes a problem is that you have a hormone factory in your body basically, and that hormone factory can produce all kinds of hormones for your health. But evolutionarily your body is not gonna keep producing those hormones if you're stressed because, imagine. If your body is going along producing normal hormones, and suddenly the boss calls down, your nervous system calls down and said there's an emergency, your body doesn't recognize whether that's just an emergency because your boss is yelling at you at work or because there's actually a legitimate threat to your life.

But what happens is your body says okay, we're shutting down production of all of these other hormones because our priority is immediate survival, right? The humans, our ancestors, maybe someone who were trying out different kinds of systems, and their systems no matter what prioritize say testosterone and oxytocin, even when there was an emergency, they didn't survive. They got killed by that saber-toothed tiger. They didn't survive to pass their genes on. It really didn't work out for them. But that's kind of a double-edged sword because we get in this challenge in our modern world where there's always this chronic low level of stress, and you're constantly producing this cortisol. And your adrenals and your other hormone-producing organs like your pituitary and pineal gland and thyroid aren't able to focus on producing to other health promoting hormones, right? And so two of the really most important hormones that we're gonna talk a lot about tonight are testosterone and oxytocin.

And something really important to understand is that biologically men and women have very different hormonal systems. We produce a lot of the same hormones, right? Like men, women both have testosterone in your systems. Only difference is guys need about 30 times the levels of testosterone as a woman. Women are more reliant on oxytocin, so our systems are different, and the way that we need to address them in order to really be experiencing thriving hormonal health is gonna be different. And when it comes to our hormones we hear a lot these days that oh, you need to take this supplement, that supplement, this herb. You need to not stress so much. A lot of it may be even, some experts are saying 50% of your hormone situation is actually lifestyle and behavior and relationships. The other half comes from diet, and it's more of a chemical situation where you're taking the right supplements, you're eating the right foods, getting all the good healthy fats in your diet. But such a huge percentage of it is behavior and how you behave in your relationships.

Guys, we do great when we keep our testosterone high, and that is something that guys, high testosterone brings down stress. Women, high testosterone does not bring down stress. High testosterone will actually cause more stress. It will make you feel for a time empowered and strong drive and really focused, but it's gonna cause more stress. So it's different people need different things. For women it's more about oxytocin. For guys, if you have a lot of oxytocin in your system, you're gonna bond, you're gonna have more empathy, but it's actually gonna drive down your testosterone levels, and it can kind of make you lethargic and a little bit more prone to irritation.

So it's different, and you gotta look at what lifestyle behaviors are gonna bring up this oxytocin. For guys it's gonna bring up testosterone. So you can really easily find explanations of this in male/female relationships. For women, you come home from work, you've had a really challenging day. What do you wanna do? Do you wanna go and just sit down and watch TV? Or would you like to talk about it? See how you're feeling?

Talk about what other people were feeling, what the other person said, what they might have been feeling, what if this happens and what if that happens, and again how it's making you feel. And you want someone to listen to that, right? You know what all that does? It drives up oxytocin. Those are the bonding hormones. Evolutionarily, why are women wired to do this? Think back to kind of tribal times, right? Guys were out doing the hunting most likely. I'm sure there were some badass women who were doing hunting, too. Much respect. But for the most part guys were out doing the hunting.

Women were cooking, gathering food, taking care of children, preparing food, picking berries, you know, whatever it may have been, dealing with different herbs and things of that nature. During that time it's really easy to talk. You can talk about all your problems, emotionally connect with each other, whereas guys, we're out there. If I'm talking with my buddy about all the different problems going on my relationship and all the things I'm thinking and feeling, that animal, that moose we were going after is gonna hear us a mile away. We didn't get to eat. Our tribe is now gonna suffer, right?

So guys, we go quietly. We do physical activity. We have a cycle of rest and action and rest and action, and then problem solving. When you're problem solving, it helps to release more testosterone. That's why if you give a guy a task to fix something, he's all over it. If it's not too complicated, and he can figure out how to do it, right? No, because like the last thing you wanna do is give a guy a thing that's like whoa, you don't know anything about computers? Can you fix my computer? You don't wanna emasculate the poor guy, right? Give him a chance, let him fix a toaster or something like that. Start easy. But problem solving is great for guys.

Girls, you bring up a problem, and you hate this, but girls, you bring up a problem, guys, we wanna problem solve, we wanna come up with solutions. Well you don't want solutions. You wanna talk about it. You wanna talk about the emotions and be heard and felt. That brings up your oxytocin. So here we have a problem. The things that build testosterone are not the things that build oxytocin. Things that build oxytocin don't build testosterone. What are we gonna do about this, right? Because that seems a problem, and it is indeed the source of a lot of friction in our relationships because ideally you wanna bring the stress down with these good hormones that are right for you as an individual. Then your whole body can thrive, and you can be happy in your relationship, and the other person will be happy.

So for women, get it to where your guy can understand that you wanna talk about the emotions. You don't need an immediate solution. AnnaBlanca and I, what we have in our relationship, when a problem is brought up we say plan A or plan B? And what that means in our relationship, plan A means I want a practical solution. Help me actually figure this out. Plan B, I just want you to be present. I wanna just be heard, I wanna be supported, and for guys that can be sometimes as simple as just a grunt that you hear it. And it sounds like it's too simple, but if you just like the power of one empathetic mmmmmm, makes her feel so heard. And of course you can do more, but if you've got a lot going on, and that's all you can give, it's a million times better than saying so what, what do you want? Or just trying to fix the problem. Or saying what do you want me to do about it? You don't need to do anything about it. You just need to plan B, be present and listen and make her feel heard and supported and safe and that nothing really too bad is gonna happen. And then for women to build the oxytocin, all your oxytocin doesn't have to come from your male partner.

You get that also from bonding with female friends. Again, back to the tribal situation, you're not hanging with your guy all day long. You're there working with the women, right, talking about your things with your female friends. You can get 90% of your oxytocin from time spent with female friends. AnnaBlanca and I, we work together all the time, but we also make sure that she has female bonding time when she can go out and build her oxytocin because it's not all gonna be able to come from me. If the guy is there trying to build the female oxytocin all the time, it can work. He can be a totally incredible guy, but it's gonna drive down his testosterone, he's gonna feel less drive, and in the long term he's not gonna be able to be there and be strong and be as supportive for you.

So girls, you can find some of the oxytocin from your female friends, and that's a great way to kind of find some balance. Now on the other hand, guys, we need to build our testosterone, so you gotta find this cycle of rest so your testosterone can rebuild. That's why the man cave exists. The man cave is testosterone factory. That's where it happens. So when a guy's relaxing, doing nothing, just chilling out, testosterone rebuilds. You go out and you do physical activity and you do problem solving, testosterone that's been building up in your hormone producing glands, now gets released. And then you do that cycle again.

You go do something, you fix the toaster, you go work out, you go exercise, come back, you rest. You go to work, you come back, you rest. So it's the cycle of doing and resting and doing and resting for guys that builds your testosterone and releases it, builds it and releases it. And so when we work this out, it's so incredible. And the other thing to keep in mind is that women are more in need of serotonin, and guys are more in need of dopamine. These are really interesting because these are different happiness chemicals, but guys, we store 50% more serotonin, and we produce serotonin at 50% faster, so we're set serotonin-wise. However, women, it's a lot more difficult. On the other hand, guys, we use up a lot of more dopamine through the cellular needs of our muscle mass, and so we need to focus on things that are gonna build more dopamine. That's gonna help us be focused and be really nicely energized.

So this is a look at how in our behavior we can really influence our hormones. It's not just about diet and about supplements. Anyone knows who's been in a toxic or like a co-dependent relationship, you don't come out feeling good, right? You don't come out feeling like, even once you break up you're like, you're down, you feel drained, you need to like rebuild for a while and rediscover yourself. What is that? It's for women go and hang out with your female friends or rebuild that oxytocin that you haven't been getting. It's a natural thing.

For guys you go with your guy friends. You go like, go do sports, right? That's rebuilding your testosterone. The thing is if you realize that before you end up in a problem in a relationship, you can save the relationship. It's so nice, right? So the other thing to keep in mind in your relationship is keeping your partner's blood sugar balanced, because anyone who's ever been around a hungry partner realizes they're not at their best, right? When your partner's blood sugar is low, they're not there to support you. They may love you from the bottom of their heart, but they feel like they're gonna die, right? They could fall over and collapse at any moment. And in falling over and collapsing, evolutionarily if you pass out because your blood sugar is low, you're easy prey for a tiger, right? So your body is gonna prioritize getting food over anything else. So if your partner is having low blood sugar, first things first. Do whatever it takes to get them food. Make them something. Get them to a restaurant. This goes for men and women because when your blood sugar's low, you start producing cortisol again. That's that stress hormone that doesn't allow any of your other hormones to be in healthy production.

So you're stressed because your body needs this, is basically using cortisol as an alternative fuel, and it's a really crappy like dirty burning alternative fuel that is not healthy, and it's not healthy for your relationship either. Nobody likes to be around you when your low blood sugar and on cortisol. So look out for your partner's blood sugar, and at the same time look out for your own so you can be a nicer person to not just your partner, but to everybody around you.

So promised I would give you guys some solutions herbally to look at stress, right? So one of my favorite herbs for this is reishi mushroom. This is a bright red mushroom. We have it in our chocolate drinks you guys have been having back there, and it grows on dead trees. And it is one of the most amazing Chinese herbs for dealing with stress. It just, it calms the mind, gets you out of your head and into your heart, and it's something that it's a tonic herb. Many of the herbs we're gonna be talking about tonight are tonic herbs, meaning it's not like echinacea or golden seal, something like that where you just take it when you're sick, right, to get better, and you don't take it for more than like a week. These are herbs that are meant to be taken in small amounts over the course of your life to build this foundation of amazing health and just allow you to adapt to whatever external circumstances you're in, because the reality of the world we're in today is it's not getting simpler. We're not getting more free time. We're just getting busier, right? All these devices that are promised, oh, is this gonna save you so much time. Does anybody since they got their last phone, or since they went from like a flip phone to a smartphone, do you have more free time? What, are you saving more time? No, not me neither, like it doesn't work that way.

So we're on a one way street there, so you're not gonna, there are more external stressors that are gonna be hitting us in five years then there are now. It's gonna be getting weird. We gonna be in virtual reality and this reality at the same time trying to keep it all balanced. Do you think it's hard like trying to live in Instagram and real life? Wait until it's like really hard, right? It's gonna be crazy, super stressful on your body. S

o the idea is we're not gonna necessarily be able to stop that procession of things, but we can take things that enhance our body's own natural adaptability so we can deal with it better, so it doesn't have the same biological impact on us as it's gonna have on other people. So one my favorites, reishi mushroom. Another one, holy basil. This is kind of like, it's almost like the ayervedic reishi. It's one of the most powerful adaptogenic herbs, again a great one for really quickly bringing down stress and anxiety, and that's one you can take every single day. Now because we're talking about hormone health, and that connects so close to reproductive health, I also wanna mention if you're a guy, and you are actually trying to have kids, don't take holy basil. It messes up your sperm temporarily in a really weird way, and can be a really strong thing to stop you from getting pregnant. If you're a guy and you're not wanting to get pregnant, pound that holy basil, go for it. It can be a great tool, but yeah, and this is something, holy basil, so many people are into it, but very few people know that it actually for as short time period really like makes you sperm go all weird and nonfunctional.

So we got those two, and then ashwagandha is another one of my favorites, and this supports the whole hormonal system in such a fantastic way. It's known as the ayurvedic ginseng. It improves your energy and endurance, but it's also supporting the thyroid and bringing down stress and anxiety. It's doing so much all at once. If you're into your health, into longevity, into feeling amazing, having great fitness, building healthy hormones, and you're not on ashwagandha, as long as you're not, it is a night shade, so if you're like crazy allergic to night shades, I wouldn't do it. But if you can handle night shades, and it's not the end of the world if you have a little bit of a night shade, ashwagandha is like just unbelievable. And it grows really fast, so it's much less expensive compared to most of the herbs out there.

So if you're on a budget, and you're like okay, I have like, I can maybe incorporate one herb or two herbs, I would say like ashwagandha number one, reishi mushroom number two. The range of things that these can do for your health on a relatively small dose every day, you know, maybe you're taking 50 cents worth or a dollar worth every day, it can just be absolutely transformational.

And the other organ that really important to talk about is the thyroid. It's a little butterfly shaped organ located right here on your neck, and it comes from the Greek word thyros, which means shield. It acts essentially as your radiation shield. So when you're being hit by radiation, your thyroid is kind of there so soak it all up for better or for worse. You got these two glands on either side, and they're connected by a little thing called the isthmus. Some people weirdly don't have a isthmus, and they have just like two separate glands on either side, but most of you probably got the full thyroid connected in the middle. And the thyroid is something that really suffers when you're under a lot of stress, like your other hormone producing organs, but the thyroid especially. And the problem is a lot of people will get their thyroid tested by their regular doctor, and will maybe just look at T3, maybe T4, don't get a full thyroid panel, and the doctor may not even know how to really assess the thyroid panel and look at the different measurements compared to each other. But it's really essential if you feel like you might have a thyroid issue, or even if you don't just to check out what's going because so many people suffer from this, millions and millions of Americans.

You need T3, T4, reverse T3, TSH and thyroid antibodies because a lot of people have Hashimoto's, which is a form of autoimmune disorder where the thyroid will be fluctuating between over active and under active, and it's just a total mess. And so many people have not been able to figure out what's causing their problems with their health, and they're trying to do everything right, and then finally they realize they have a thyroid problem, and they start addressing it from that perspective, and boom, from like one week to the next it can totally transform your health and problems that had no matter what you do, they never seemed to go away. You hit the thyroid, everything falls into place.

It's so powerful, and the problem is most doctors don't know what to look for, or they don't test all the right things. And so people think oh, my doctor checked my thyroid. Everything is cool. And they hear this for years. And you may even look at a list of thyroid symptoms, for under active thyroid, and you say oh, I have this and I have this and I have this, but my doctor said my thyroid was cool. It must be fine, it can't be that. Until one day you finally get a full thyroid panel, and you realize it's been my thyroid all along, and I didn't know all these years. So getting a full thyroid panel, super important. It's something that is worthwhile for everyone to do.

The other problem we run into hormones is we have a lot of things that mimic hormones. You have a lot of chemicals and plant compounds that look a lot like our hormones. And hormones are essentially a game of musical chairs. So you have a limited number of chairs, you guys all know how the game works, and you have more players than you have chairs. Now these chairs are our hormone receptors, and so you get good things coming in like testosterone, oxytocin, estrogen, progesterone, but then you also get things coming in like phthalates, like BPA like you get from plastic water bottles.

So maybe you go to drinking out of BPA-free water bottles. You know what they use instead of BPA? BPS, which stands for basically plastic shit. It's basically the same thing. They just swap out a different chemical, so really, really, really try to go for glass if you can. And so these all these different kinds of compounds. You know what else looks like it is hormones given to animals, so if you're eating a conventional animal products, those animals are eating this stuff all the time, concentrating those compounds. Same with pesticides if you're eating non-organic food. Those pesticides look a lot like your hormones and take up these seats and don't allow the healthy hormones to sit in those seats. Again, if you're having animal foods that are not cleanly raised, that are not grass fed, they're eating pesticides, they're concentrating all these pesticides for you, and then you get a mega dose. How nice, right? It's no fun. So you really wanna be aware of these things that are taking up the seats.

A great supplement you can take, two things actually that are often combined, Indol-3-Carbinol and DIM, diindolyl-methane. For anyone who's like oh crap, I don't know how to spell all of these things, within the next week on our YouTube channel we're gonna put this video up, and then we're gonna do all the subtitles for it. So you can just look through to the part that you're wondering about, and everything will have the perfect spelling for you there. So if you can't spell it or you don't get it in your phone fast enough, don't worry. You'll have another chance. So these toxic estrogen mimics are important to avoid and detox the ones you have, so your actual beneficial hormones can get into these seats.

Now herbs that are gonna work directly on your hormones. So for women there are some amazing herbs, and not many of them are very well known. So you have for example shatavari or shatavari, depending on how you like to pronounce it. It's an ayurvedic herb, and it translates to she who has 1,000 husbands. Doesn't mean you gotta have 1,000 husbands or be very promiscuous, but it means it gives you the strength and hormonal fortitude to deal with the crap of 1,000 guys, right? And what woman wouldn't like to just be able to deal with all these guys, right? So shatavari is amazing. It's fantastic for building up all your healthy hormones.

And for women another thing to keep in mind when you're dealing with hormones is that you have to build your blood. Guys, we're fine, we don't need to worry about that so much. Women, you're bleeding every month, and so you need to really look at what's gonna build up that heme, what's gonna build up that iron, and there's some great herbs for doing this. One is white peony, great blood builder, and when you have enough blood in your body it creates such a difference in your vitality, right? And for example, there's also some Chinese formulas. For example, Ginseng and Longan is one, and Buplerum and Peony is another. These are great blood building formulas that women when they start taking these very often they feel so much more vitality coming back into their bodies. And just you have the fuel in your system. You have the blood to carry the nutrients around, to carry the oxygen throughout the body, to carry the oxygen and nutrients to your brain, and just everything kind of starts working better. It goes back to what we were saying at the beginning. When you start hitting these master switches at the top, a lot of things downstream fall into place.

And again I wanna mention ashwagandha here. Now that we talked about a little more about the thyroid, it's gonna make sense. Ashwagandha is one of the top thyroid herbs. It's also one of the top stress herbs. So those two very important parts of where it's gonna support you hormonally and allow your natural system to produce these healthy hormones. Ashwagandha helps to sort it out. Now for guys. Some of the herbs are the same. For example, ashwagandha, I say this for everybody. I'm like a broken record on this one, but it's fantastic. Also helps to build your testosterone, and it's been tested for building muscle and lean muscle mass.

Other things really good for guys, cistanche, gelatinized maca. Now everybody's heard about maca by now. Now a lot of maca out there is being marketed as raw maca. The thing with raw maca is it's not how it was traditionally consumed, and it's able to have a lot of starch in it, and it's very hard to break down, and it can actually cause a lot of flatulence. And I say it's cruel to give somebody an aphrodisiac herb that's gonna cause flatulence. It's just like why would you do that? That's just, it's just mean. So gelatinized maca is matcha that's been treated with some heat. It's essentially been like roasted, so it helps to break down some of those starches so the whole thing is much easier for you to digest, and it's actually more potent, so you're getting more for your money. And then we have black ginger. It's a Thai herb that we also we put in our love chocolate. It's a great aphrodisiac. And these are things that are gonna support your hormones on the most base level. It's gonna replenish your kidneys and your adrenals.

Also you have herbs like cordyceps and he shou wu and rehmannia. These are all herbs that are actually in this chocolate up here, so make sure everybody comes and grabs plenty of chocolate afterwards. That's in our recharge chocolate. It's basically got all the best herbs for supporting your kidneys and adrenals and restoring that base core robust vitality. And these herbs, they work really both for men and women. It's replenishing your kidneys and your adrenals in a way that just gives you this deep source of power that we've really depleted in our lives.

The other thing that's so essential, and this kind of ties back a little bit to stress, is getting the right sleep at night and the right sunlight in the daytime. Sleep is essential because if you don't get enough sleep, what does your body do to adapt to make sure you actually make it through the day? You're producing cortisol again, right? Just like as if you were stressed. You're producing cortisol all day long. It's this kind of really dirty burning fuel to keep you going. While you're doing that, your body can't produce enough of the other hormones as it really wants to.

Then during the day you want vitamin D3, whether you're getting that from the sun or from supplements. If you're taking it as a supplement, 5-10,000 IUs. But you wanna make sure you're also taking vitamin K2 because it tells your body what to do with the D3 and what to do with the calcium that it's gonna help to produce in your body. And D3 is so important. It is actually a hormone. They call it a vitamin. It really acts as more of a hormone, and it's so powerful epigenetically in how it can change your genetic expression for the better. It actually influences over 3,000 different genetics, so it's amazing.

Then dietarily we really wanna look at healthy fats. If you look at sort of like a family tree of how hormones break down and break down into different hormones in your body, right at the top you get pregnenolone, and also at the top you have cholesterol, as all these years we've been fed this fat-free diet. High sugar, which sends you on the sugar rollercoaster so you get these blood sugar problems that we mentioned earlier, and you don't have the fats to give your body the basic building blocks to make these healthy hormones. So we flip that around. We go low sugar to no sugar, lots of good healthy fats. So you have things like ghee, you have things like coconut oil, olive oil, nuts and seeds in a way that ideally they're raw and sprouted and things like that, so it's easier for you to digest, not too heavy on your digestive system. And you have all of the great building blocks that are gonna give your body the ingredients it needs to really build these healthy hormones.

Now the last thing, and when we have a slide show, I show you like Darth Vader in this one because this is called aromatization. It's when the good hormones go over to the dark side. So your body produces an enzyme called aromatase, and this is something you produce more and more of as you get older, and it takes good hormones like testosterone and turns them into bad hormones like DHT, or good hormones like progesterone and turns them into toxic estrogens that build up too high in your system, and that may have been good for you when you were in your teen years, but are no longer beneficial when you're 40, 50, 60. So aromatase inhibitors are things like quercetin, like broccoli, Indol-3-Carbinol and diindolyl-methane. Those are all things that can prevent that conversion, and when the conversion has happened already in your system, it can help to detoxify some of these unhealthy hormones.

The last thing I wanna share with you guys is a bit of Taoist health philosophy, and the reason I wanna share this, not only is it so powerful, but we've covered so much different stuff in a very short amount of time. I've kind of life asked you to drink out of a fire hose here, I know, and so I wanna give us a bit of a framework that you can put all this information in that's gonna be very useful and aid you to adapt. And tomorrow morning when you think back to tonight, I don't want you to think like whoa, that was like a lot of information. What actually even happened there?

This framework is gonna be a way for you to store away all of this that you can return to it later. So in the Taoist herbal system they have what's called the three treasures. And they say the three treasures are what forms your life. And they use the metaphor of a candle to explain these. So the wax and the wick of the candle is what's called the jing, J-I-N-G. This is your base core essence. It's what you're built out of. It's essentially your energy savings account. So we all inherit a certain amount of jing from our parents, and some more, some less. It's kind of like a trust fund. Some people come in with lots, and they're just like loaded without ever having to really work for it. Some people come in, and you gotta work super hard every day of your life just to pay the bills. It's like this with your jing.

Some people inherit great life force because their parents and grandparents were eating healthy food and had great genetics and passed this on. Some people, you know, we've all met people and maybe even some of us who we try so hard to do the right healthy stuff all of our lives, but we're always like kind of struggling and just barely holding on. If we don't stay super healthy and really stick to our diet and our supplements and all that, it really falls apart right away. We didn't inherit too much jing. It's okay though, because there are ways to deal with it.

But on the other hand you have these people that the trust fund jing babies who inherited so much, and they're the people we all know who don't live a healthy diet at all, and they make fun of you for all the stuff you do because they're not doing any of it. They're like smoking cigarettes and eating McDonald's, yet they still have like tons of energy, right? We all know those people, and we're kind of jealous, right, because they get to do it all. But they are, what's gonna happen to them? They'll go to like 50, 60, and then they'll hit a wall. They'll have a heart attack one day, and it's all over. That's how it works, right? And it's sad, it's sad, right? But you know, it'll sneak up on them, and with living this healthier lifestyle, even if you don't start out with a lot of jing, you learn how to respect that jing, and you use it slowly, right?

We're all using jing little by little every day, and we have what are called jing leaks. This is where you're not living sustainably. Your diet's poor, you're doing drugs and alcohol, you're smoking, you're stressing too much. Anytime you're dipping into the energy savings account and draining yourself and burning the candle at both ends, you're dipping into that savings account. You're not living from your checking account anymore. You're dipping into your savings. It's not sustainable, right? You're shortening essentially your lifespan. When you run out of jing, you die. That's it.

So we learn to respect that jing, and so that's the wax and the wick of the candle. Next you have the flame. This is the active part of the candle. It's your moment to moment energy, vitality, cognitive function, immune system function.

And so if we talked about the jing as being the wax and the wick, the qi, that's gonna be the savings, sorry. So if we talked about the jing as being a savings account, qi, that's gonna be the checking account. It's what you use, it's what you gain this energy every day from the air you breathe, the food you eat and just how well you're taking care of yourself. If you're getting enough qi, you don't have to tap into your jing. You don't have to drain that savings account, that one time life force that you kind of inherit. You don't have to start tapping into that.

Then ultimately, your ultimate purpose is not just to have a lot of energy, right? It's cool, but it's not your ultimate purpose in life. And the candle, its ultimate purpose is not just to have a big flame. It's to give off a great light. That's the third treasure, that's the shen. It's your ultimate purpose, it's your higher self, it's the light you give off and share with the world. But if you're a little birthday candle with no jing, you're not gonna be able to give off a lot of light. You're not gonna be able to impact a lot of other people and really be a blessing up the world if you're struggling health-wise, and you're kind of a burden upon those around you, right?

So we start with the jing. We start with these jing hormone building herbs. Jing is almost a metaphor for the robustness of your hormone health, and that's what we're talking about tonight. And you build up this big candle, and eventually you can have a great flame, and you can give off an amazing light and have a great spirit and have such a beneficial impact on your friends, your family and the whole world. Thank you. Thank you.

So I think we have some time for a Q&A, so let's just jump right into it. Anybody who has questions about anything, I'm an open book. This is my favorite part of the whole thing, so just raise your hand, and we'll get into it. Go ahead.

- [Attendee] Are there any herbs that can, you spoke about holy basil, how it could be a detriment to men. Are there any herbs that are negative for women?

- Yeah, so it depends, you know. Certain testosterone building herbs for women you don't wanna overdo, because like I said guys, we want 30 times the amount of testosterone as a woman. So a woman may benefit from taking like a little bit of tribulus. It helps normalize ovulation, for example, but overdoing it obviously, not gonna be good. Pine pollen as a tincture is another one. It's very androgenic, testosterone building. Small amount could be okay, but women could benefit more from pine pollen as a powder. Pine pollen powder, people talk about it as being always so good for hormones. It's not. It's very nutritious, but it doesn't have much of a hormonal affect as the studies show. For that effect, you go to the tincture. And then if you are trying to have a kid, basically lots of these herbs that we talked about, the reality is they haven't been studied and tested for safety during pregnancy and breast-feeding because there's not a lot of women lining up to say oh yeah, I'm pregnant, go ahead, test this thing on me, right? No, who's gonna do that? So basically the thing is take all these best herbs right up until the point of ovulation. Then stop taking them until you find out either you're pregnant or you get your period. You find out you're pregnant, don't do any of this until you're done breast-feeding. If you get your period, obviously you've got another two weeks or so of being able to enjoy all the herbs. Yeah, sure, go ahead.

- Ashwagandha should be fresh or you can buy the capsules?

- So ashwagandha is a root, and a lot of companies will sell what they call the crude powder, and this is where the root has just been powdered down. It's not very good. It's a very cheap way of processing it, and it's not maximally beneficial. You want what's called an extract powder where it's been extracted into water, made much more bioavailable and concentrated, and you're gonna get a lot more out of it that way. Yeah, my pleasure. Go ahead.

- [Attendee] With the Indol-3-carbinol is that something that we want to make part of your supplements every day to be detoxing, or is that something that you, is a cleanse? You know what I mean?

- Both, both because--

- Like can you take that--

- You can go like kind of high dose for like 30 days, and in 30 days it will radically transform the levels of unhealthy hormones and hormone mimics in your body. So it's awesome to do like a big dose, 30-day detox of it. Take it on an empty stomach. The labels will often tell you take it with food. You get a lot more out of it taking it on an empty stomach, and it doesn't really disturb your digestion. And then long term you can take it because the fact is we're constantly being exposed to, as I said, these different estrogens. You get a hug from somebody with great cologne or perfume, that's full of phthalates that are gonna block up your hormone receptors. It's kind of ironic, right? We put on cologne or perfume to be sexy. It's one of the unhealthiest things for your sexual health. It totally messes you up. It's such a joke, right? And so we're constantly being exposed to these things. You may be trying to eat all organic, but you know, you go out to dinner, and you have something that is not organic or whatever. You're getting things in all the time that are suboptimal. That's just a reality of the modern world, so if you were living full pure caveman lifestyle in the old days, you probably wouldn't need it, but it's a nice thing to take on a regular basis, or do a cleanse from time to time. But yeah, it's an easy one that can do on an ongoing basis.

- [Attendee] Which one?

- That's Indol-3-Carbinol. You can just Google that as I3C. Jad, go ahead.

- [Jad] Would you recommend DIM for men as well, and also on a 30-day program? Would that be--

- For both, for both yeah, because guys, we also get into trouble. We build up too much estrogens, and DHT as we get older, and we're producing more aromatase. The aromatization, turning those good healthy testosterone that we're working so hard to build, it just gets turned into other things like DHT, which causes balding, and then it can also turn into bad estrogens that will mess you up as well and take up these seats in our game of musical chairs.

- [Jad] Is there a certain kind, I know there are a lot of different kinds of DIM extracts. Is there are kind of DIM X that you recommend?

- For me I, so I'm kind of hard core with the way I take things. I like getting them just in a pure powder from a company like Bulk Supplements, and I just will put it in a little water. Like DIM actually tastes kind of nice. I just kind of pop it on my tongue. It's not too difficult, and same with like trimethyl glycine or Indol-3-Carbinol, their taste is not too rough. You just need a little bit, and just pop it. But for most people honestly, capsules is probably gonna be the most convenient way to do it. The key thing when you're deciding like how am I gonna take it, am I gonna take a tincture, am I gonna take a powder, a capsule, figure out what is gonna be the easiest for you, what you're reasonably gonna do on a daily basis because if I told you powder is the most potent, but you're like this is disgusting, I'm not putting powder in my mouth, you're never gonna take it. You're not gonna get any good out of it. So figure out what's gonna be the form that actually works for you, I would say. Go ahead.

- [Attendee] Sage, thanks for sharing! Which of your chocolates is most conducive to men's health.

- Conducive to what, sorry?

- [Attendee] To men's health.

- Oh, to men's health, yeah, absolutely. I would really say, I mean it depends what's going on with the men's health, like you know, there can be different things going on. Overall the recharge chocolate, the black one, this has the most powerful hormone supporting herbs for men and women in there. It's things that, this is essentially a jing chocolate. We talked about about that jing, that primordial kidney-adrenal reserve savings account energy. These herbs in there, so we have cordyceps, you have he shou wu, eucommia, cistanche, rehmannia and morinda. These are like the six most powerful, like you could maybe throw in things in there into that category say like deer antler or even placenta, but coming from the plant world, these are like this is it for building the kidneys, adrenals and the hormone system. Yeah, I think you'll really enjoy that one. Go ahead.

- Me?

- Yes, you.

- Okay, do you recommend anything for a woman with PCOS say like if you have one herb or one vitamin besides just?

- Yes, I'll mention two things. So we talked about Indol-3-Carbinol and DIM. There's a huge bad estrogen component very often to situations like that. And then the second one is systemic enzymes, specifically serrapeptase. I really like a product called SerraGold. It's spelled S-E-R-R-A-G-O-L-D from Enzymedica. And if you take one a day, it's not really gonna do much. You gotta go more like 10 a day or more if you can afford it. It's basically one of those things where I say it's so good for you, you take as much as you can afford. You do it with a lot of water on an empty stomach at least two hours away from food in either direction because if you take it with food, your body will just use it to digest. You take it on an empty stomach, and it works to go eat things up and eat up scar tissue and things like that, and eat up cysts. And I have a number of personal friends who have had like transformational things happen with that in like 30 to 60 days.

- Great.

- Awesome.

- Daniel.

- [Daniel] So I don't think I've had a blood test in like 5 years. I need to go get one done.

- Well, you better enter the drawing plan to get your baseline hormone panel done if you went. Post on Instagram? You gotta get posting, yeah.

- [Daniel] So I would do a full thyroid thing, like thyroid panel and things that aren't normally picked up by your typical doctor. Are there any other things kind off off their radar?

- Thyroid is the one where they miss the most. You wanna definitely look at your different estrogens. You wanna look at your cortisol. This is something they test for, but often another thing is you wanna get somebody really good to analyze it because--

- [Daniel] Would you do that?

- You come over, bring some bee pollen, and we'll work something out. But basically what happens is the relative ranges are so wide, and most doctor's will say oh, you're within range, you're all right. But the real healthy range for like the kind of health that everybody who's coming here to Next Health really wants to achieve is a much narrower range that you wanna be in. Jennifer.

- [Jennifer] I have a question in regards to, remember when we talked about the PCOS, a lot of times insulin resistance goes hand in hand with that.

- Yes, thank you for mentioning that as well.

- [Jennifer] Does this I3C also hold a pattern to that herb that also helps with insulin resistance? I know about intermittent fasting and time restricted eating

- Supplement wise probably one of the most impactful is bitter melon. Also reishi is actually really good. Reishi is very underrated for this and its ability to regulate blood sugar and insulin. So yeah, I would go look at reishi mushroom as well. And you can come at it from the stress side of things as well. Basically anything that's gonna be helping with stress is gonna be helping to regulate the whole blood sugar department. Go ahead.

- [Attendee] For autoimmune diseases, what is ?

- So I have to do a little disclaimer here, and I should have done this earlier, but I'm neither doctor nor a dentist nor a medical professional. I am sharing things purely as humorous education. This is actually a comedy show, no matter what it may look like. Now if I had an autoimmune situation, first like you gotta look at diet because so much of that can cause autoimmune flare ups. Then look to the thyroid, a lot going on there. And then you can look at a lot of these adaptogenic herbs that are adaptogenic from an immune perspective. You have things like reishi mushroom here. That's one I talk about it so much because it does so many things. It has these long chain sugars in it called beta glucan polysaccharides that are up to three feet long. They're wrapped up in little balls, and they come into your body and they kind of unwind, and your white blood cells chop them up into smaller pieces, and they attach to your white blood cells and essentially teach them how to do their job better. It's like an operating system upgrade for your immune system, and then it gets even more sci-fi. Then your white blood cells can shoot them off like missiles and weapons against foreign invaders and pathogens, it's amazing.

- [Attendee] And is reishi a type of herb that's reserved for at night?

- For nighttime? Yeah, yeah, you can really do it both ways. It's not a sedative, it just makes you feel peaceful. For people who stress is interfering with sleep, great. It's awesome one to take morning and night because you have stress during the daytime as well, right? Nighttime isn't the only time that stress is the problem, and it can help you adapt to so many external challenges.

- [Attendee] What's your favorite way to take reishi

- Ooh, good question. I lately my most common way of doing it is I have a really strong dual extracted reishi powder that, it's basically what we use in our tranquility chocolate. We don't have it for sale yet. We will in the future because it's like it's so freaking good I want it to be available. But I just, and this is a great way to experience any new herb. I really like this. If you have an herb in a powder, take about two to four ounces of hot water and put like say half a teaspoon of the herb in there and stir it up. And just drink it like that. It won't taste good, and I apologize for that in advance, right? But I think anytime you're taking a new herb, before you start taking it in capsules or tincture or blending it into smoothies, it's really amazing to take the individual herb in a little bit of hot water on its own on an empty stomach, and really kind of meet that herb, right? It's like if I claim to really know any one of you because I just met you real quick tonight in passing, or I saw you out in the audience. That's what it's like when you put an herb in your smoothie, right, and you say oh, I know exactly how this feels. Maybe, but when you, at least the first time, meet the herb face to face, take it own its own. Get to know it, get to know all the flavor notes of it, how it makes you feel on its own, and then you can put it in whatever you want, I don't care. I mean look at me, I'm putting herbs in chocolate, and you don't taste them. But that's why we also started to come out with individual herbs, like we have the lion's mane and the blue butterfly and tremella because I wanted people to meet them firsthand. Now reishi, often tincture is also a very powerful way to take it because it soaks up in the mucus membrane of your mouth, and you start to feel it right away. The most powerful feeling I ever experienced was the first time I ever took wild reishi tincture from Dragon Herbs. I thought I was taking something else, and it was that by mistake, so I wasn't even, I had no preconception of how it was gonna influence me. I actually thought I was taking deer antler at the time, and so I was expecting energy. What I got was very different, and I realized it very quick, and I checked the bottle and was just like whoa. I just like my mind went quiet. My heart felt like it was blossoming. I was just about to go into a yoga class, and it was Astanga Yoga, so I wanted the power of deer antler, but I got this instead. And I just kind of went and stood at the front of my mat like this, and just like, wow. This is really nice, this is really nice. And it's kind of like that with herbs. You'll always have, that's why I say take it on its own the first time and really get to know it. The first time you ever take an herb will be your most profound experience with it most likely. When you're driving a car, you don't feel speed, right? You can be going 80 on the freeway, it doesn't feel that fast. But when you floor it in a sports car going from zero to 60, you really feel that. You feel the acceleration, you feel the change. So when an herb the first time you take it totally creates a shift in you, you'll really feel that. If you're taking it every day forever, you won't maybe even notice it so much because you just get used to it. Your body becomes accustomed. You're still getting all the benefits, and you're being kept at this high level of speed, and you're still going 100 miles an hour, but you don't feel it like when it accelerated you from zero to 100. Did I see a hand over here, yeah.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- [Attendee] Can you please tell me about the sugar alcohol?

- Oh yeah, so there's lots of different sugar alcohols. You have things like maltitol, sorbitol, erythritol, xylitol. They're all kind of scary sounding. Most of the are very scary. Most of them are made from GMO corn, which obviously is no fun for anybody. It's not fun for the planet. It's not fun for the soil. It's not fun when you have ground up residues going into your gut and causing you all sorts of problems and leaky gut, and as we saw glyphosate now shown to cause cancer, proven by that court case the other day. Who saw that in the news? Great, how awesome is that, that Bayer and Monsanto just got taken down for $289 million dollars. And did you guys know there's thousands of other similar cases pending against them?

- [Attendee] Wow.

- And it's funny because, I'll get back to your question in a second, but I was just thinking about this to other day, like we all were so sad when Bayer and Monsanto merged. Like oh no, two devils like are gonna come together and be one like big bad beast. What if, and this is just being optimistic here, but what if Monsanto was the poison pill that Bayer swallowed by accident and now kills them? Just fingers crossed, I like to be optimistic. I like to be optimistic. But yeah, so there's these different sugar alcohols, and we use xylitol in our products, but we only use xylitol made from hardwood, made from birch trees. And this has actually been shown in studies dating back as far as the '80s to have beneficial effects on the gut microbiome. It kills off bad bacteria in the gut, and actually has prebiotic effects. Because it does kill off some bad bacteria in the gut, if you take like a tablespoon, which is far more than we put in anything that we do, if you take a tablespoon or two and you're not used to it, you can have some flushing through of things. Now there is a different problem that happens with other ones. You know, many people will try like a sorbitol or something like that, or maltitol, and just have like absolute disaster in the stomach and on the toilet, and will never go back to any form of sugar alcohol. The kind really matters in the way it affects the gut. There's a big difference, and what it's made from makes a huge difference. Yeah, all right, any other questions before we go to party time, just go wild on chocolate. Last call, last call. Okay, thank you guys so much. It's been a pure pleasure. Thank you so much.

- Sage, I just wanna thank you so much. You are a complete wealth of knowledge and so fun to listen to.

- Thank you.

- I don't know where you get all your information from, but it's incredible.

- Thank you so much.

- And you know, it's such an important topic that you talk about with hormones. Hormones is something that affects everyone, and I think it's one of the most overlooked things that we deal with because pretty much everyone after the age of 30, your hormones start depleting, right?

- Goes downhill.

- It's the aging process--

- Exactly. that everyone deals with, but the problem with that is once your hormone levels are depleting, then you're, you know, aging is, you're accelerating the aging process. Your body now becomes susceptible to the onset of all chronic diseases, dementia, Alzheimer's, cancer. So having the ability of keeping your hormones optimal is a complete game changer. So I just, I love that you're spreading that message. These chocolates, I mean you didn't talk much about this.

- I'll let you guys taste it, and take it from there.

- This chocolate, I mean I'm sure probably everyone's had it here, but it's the best thing you ever tasted in your life. We sell it, but I promise you our staff eats 90% of it. And you know, so much of what we try to do at Next Health is give people the ability of taking an active role in their health, and it's all about healthy habits, right? Because if you have to make these monumental changes, it's hard to do that. So what we're trying to do is make it easier. Make little attainable goals and steps that you can take that are gonna improve your life exponentially. So the fact that you made these things that are so delicious, and they do everything that you just talked about is phenomenal, and you know I just, I love what you're doing, and we're all gonna support you, and I'm glad that you're here.

- Thanks so much I really appreciate it.