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June 1, 1995 - Bill Cooper
57:24
Michael Cottingham – Herbs
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Time Text
*Morning* Yes,
and the open is the clear and the open is the clear of their sea.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the fourth day of our conference.
And we have some people out here who are waterlogged with information. - Okay.
They are dragging around.
Yes, sir, because we keep them busy from the first thing in the morning when we get up until about 11.30 at night.
And if they didn't have to sleep sometime, we'd keep them up all night.
Tonight we're going to be talking to one of the most popular speakers here this week, and I'll tell you all about him in just a couple of moments.
It's half past six o'clock, I'm ready for show mode.
Gotta catch up, I don't know if it's me or you.
Up and down, up and left and right, it's such a different way to go.
Cinderella, Cinderella, has the party lights on low.
Listen to the radio.
Love is on the air tonight, and it's on a coast to coast.
Look out!
Love, you've got me right tonight.
You've had a look at all that you've done.
You're in a station.
You're laughing.
You're shocked.
You've had the wrong kind of mood.
Don't let this get worse.
Don't let this get worse.
Prepare your world for me.
You should never care for her.
It's the wrong kind of girl that I need.
You might sound like me to her.
I suppose she likes me back.
But don't you come on now.
She likes you better, better, better than you.
Why do you care?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming to you from the old drugstore in St.
Yowza, yowza, yowza.
Coming to you from the old drugstore in St. John's, Arizona, is yours and mine.
Herbalist Michael Cottingham.
Hello, Bill.
Hello, Michael.
You know, you're quite popular around here.
You're almost as popular as Michelle.
Well, she's a hard act to follow.
Her information is vitally important to all of us, as well as herbal information.
Well, yours is, too.
She just had... Let me see.
She had eight more hours to talk than you did.
And I'm sure if you had that much more, it would be a real toss-up.
I really enjoyed your talk.
You talked for four hours about a lot of things that I didn't know.
I didn't know that I could just walk out my door and up the street a little ways and grab some bark off a tree and make my pains go away.
Well, it can be quite easy.
Herbal medicine and our relationship with plants dates back eons, thousands of years, and it seems only recently in the last 50 years have we gradually been driven away or almost forced away from the natural world and our relationship to plants and It really is quite easy.
I think a lot of people think that herbal medicine is complex But I don't think it is really Well after listening you talk, I don't think it is either in And by the way, I was only joking.
You're probably right up there with the very best people here.
And everybody, and I mean everybody, really was sitting on the edge of their chairs and really enjoyed what you had to say.
And I personally learned a lot.
And you gave us all a sheet of concoctions that we can mix ourselves if we can identify the plants to concoct with.
But this is just amazing because what I heard you say, Was everybody listening to this broadcast, if they were to listen to you, could save an awful lot, thousands and thousands of dollars in doctor bills and money that they spend for things that they really probably shouldn't be buying and things like that.
Why don't you just start off and just go into whatever you want to go into.
And if we have time later, folks, we'll open the phones and let you call in and talk to Michael.
But I've got to tell you something right now.
This man is a wealth of information that we all need to listen to.
Well, Bill, it's much more than just money.
It's sure you can save money on herbal substitutes, and many of the herbs will actually allow you to wean yourself away from prescription medicines.
But the herbs represent much more than just a money-saving opportunity, much more than a medical, medicinal substitute.
They represent a way of connecting back to nature and back to the land and back to something that provides a lot of freedom and a lot of hope for your spirit.
And good help.
But you see, I know my radio audio.
If I don't connect it with money, they're not going to listen as hard.
Money is something you chase after, and often some of the best things in the world are right in your backyard, like herbal medicines.
You know, what really impressed me is everything that you showed us.
And I mean everything.
You came in here with a big bucket full of plants.
That you collected between Silver City, New Mexico, which is where you live and where you do your business, and the Research Center in St.
John's.
And every single plant that you had in your bucket had a capability of having a major effect on the health of anybody who knew how to use those plants.
That's right.
It was a 5-gallon bucket and we had maybe 25, maybe 30 plants in there at the most.
And we must have driven past at least 200 herbal medicines.
Let's talk about some of the things that you brought.
Well, let's do this for our listening audience.
What are some of the things that would be easiest for them to learn right off the bat and would be beneficial for their health and well-being that we can give them in the short amount of time that we have?
Well, first off, I would always say try to find a person that lives near you that is good at being able to identify plants, giving you botanical or Latin names, so you always have positive identification. giving you botanical or Latin names, so you always have
But often trying to find somebody locally who can actually take you out on an herb walk or take you out into the field and point out the medicines firsthand will give you great confidence.
The problem with a lot of people, I think, is they're actually afraid to grab a book They're afraid to use the research tools available, like arboretums, like state parks where there's little signs that describe the plant and give you the Latin name and a common name for the plant.
They're afraid to go to the university and talk to the botany professor.
Or they're afraid to use herbarium specimens with herpressed specimens that have been identified by professional botanists.
You didn't say barium specimen, you said herbarium.
Herbarium, yes.
Barium specimens would be messy, but... I know Ann keeps chasing me with that cup, and I'm like, there's barium in that cup.
But if you started in your backyard, and I think people that mow lawns and people that have lawns in the parts of In the areas of the country.
In the west here we kind of try to get away from having lawns because it requires too much water to keep them alive.
But dandelions.
People actually go out and spray herbicides and go out purposely to kill and destroy dandelions in their yard.
Well I'm confused because the only thing we've got in my yard is dandelions.
Well you guys are the rocks.
Well depending on what kind of rocks they are.
The Dandelions is what I would look at first.
You have actually a wealth of herbal medicine and food in your yard.
Dandelions are listed in most basic herb books into the more sophisticated, more medical orientated herbal references.
Dandelions offer Both the use of the leaf and the root material.
There are different times of the year to get different medical actions from dandelion.
But say early in the spring, and I think a lot of people listening might actually know this, dandelion greens are considered edible.
Very good.
We use them in salads occasionally.
I wouldn't say all the time, and certainly not as often as maybe we should.
I wasn't kidding when I said that my yard is full of dandelions, and we do occasionally pick the big broad leaves and throw them in the salad bowl, and it's very good.
What are some of the things that dandelions are good for, besides salad?
Well, besides salad, but that actually can be a very important aspect.
If you use them as salad, you probably have found them to be slightly bitter.
And it will be more bitter at different times of the year and more bitter as we get larger.
As spring wanes and summer starts to come on, the dandelion leaf gets extremely bitter.
Bitter substances are missing from the American diet.
In Chinese herbal medicine, there are five tastes that are listed.
Salty taste, acrid, sweet and sour.
And bitters.
Bitters, we have all the other tastes.
The one that's missing from our diet is bitters.
And bitters have a tendency, when you use them in greens or use them in other herbal forms, to stimulate digestion.
And stimulating digestion really helps to, it seems in our culture we're eating a lot of things that fill us up, make us feel full.
Our digestion usually seems slow.
Bitters have a way of stimulating digestion and creating movement for our upper GI or the upper gastrointestinal tract.
And that in turn helps the lower.
Exactly.
People suffering from constipation, people suffering from flaccolence or gas after they've eaten a meal.
They've eaten a meal and if they feel full or stuck often will benefit from bitters.
Well, that seems to be the purpose that most people in America eat is just to get full.
And they'll just stop just about anywhere where something appeals to them and do that.
you know, You know, the other day when you were talking, when I was sitting back there, I have a problem with my legs, and if I stand up a long time, they really hurt a lot.
I mean, really a lot.
And when you were giving your talk, I was having quite a bit of pain, and you were talking about the aspen bark, and that's a bitter.
Also, I can swear to that.
Definitely.
And you passed around a branch of aspen and then a big section, I guess about 27 inches of bark, maybe about an inch and a half to two inches wide that you peeled off an aspen tree on the way over here.
And when you were talking about the benefits of that aspen bark, I took about a four inch section of that big piece of bark It was about an inch and a half wide and I chewed that for about an hour and it really is bitter.
I mean it was kind of hard to do but I did it and the pain in my legs went away.
So why don't you talk about that because I think that's very interesting especially since around here and I know that not everybody listening has aspen growing anywhere near them but we do all around us.
And I never knew, I never thought in my wildest dreams that Aspen Bark could be a pain reliever.
And it does other things, too.
Let's talk about that for a little bit.
Yes, it can be as simple.
Aspen Bark comes from the genus, the Populus genus.
Another relative is the Salix or Willow.
So in some parts of the country people will have actually white willow or the red willows growing by.
If they have the Salix genus, the genus is the first part of the Latin name of a plant.
And it's always important to strive to find out the Latin name.
There are so many common names.
Aspen has been called Aspen bark, Aspen, quaking Aspen.
This plant, the bark of it, contains precursors which are a chemical constituent called salicin, which is a precursor to aspirin.
For all intents and purposes, aspen bark, willow bark, is basically aspirin.
There are other benefits of taking it in the herbal form.
The aspen bark and the willow bark have other chemical constituents which actually protect the stomach lining and protect the parts of the body that may actually be irritated by people that are susceptible to using, that are using aspen and using too much of it.
A lot of people know that too much aspirin will actually cause nosebleeds or capillary fragility, irritate the stomach.
You hardly ever find that happening when you use Willow Bark or Aspen Bark.
Well, the truth is aspirin has a lot of bad side effects, and any amount of aspirin taken by any body will cause bleeding in the stomach.
And over a period of time it can cause ulcers and all kinds of terrible problems, and also aspirin thins the blood, and if you get in an accident or have a cut, you can bleed an awful lot before you get some clotting action.
And this doesn't take care of all of that, but it does alleviate some of the most of the bad effects of aspirin are not present with this willow bark and aspen bark and some of these other things.
That's right.
It's, you know, if you overdo anything, even if it's herbal, you can get side effects.
A definition of herbs that I tell a lot of students and a lot of people that want to hear the information is that herbs cause change.
And as long as you remember that and look for the change and respect the change, you can then tailor the change for medicinal benefits.
Aspen bar can be used In larger dosages it can be used longer periods of time than straight aspirin just because the constituents that are buffering agents are found in the aspen and willow bark and not in aspirin.
You're right though, aspen bark and willow bark also thin the blood.
You have a greater grace period with using some herbal medicines over pharmaceuticals Although both worlds are necessary.
There are times when pharmaceutical medicines are probably more appropriate for some people.
Now, you're sort of, well, sort of, you're a great exception to the rule.
I mean, you occasionally have medical doctors send patients to you.
I mean, that's how good you have been with people.
And you're very, I can't find a word, but bending.
You don't just insist that herbs are the only answer and you're willing to work with doctors because pharmaceuticals aren't the only answer either.
They're willing to work with you.
I thought that was incredible in a society where medicine, the medical profession, especially the American Medical Association, is so bent upon destroying alternative health care.
Well, truth seems to come in different forms and if you really approach healing or herbal medicine or medicine in general and you're looking for truth, you realize there's so many different ways to approach it.
There's pharmaceuticals and emergency medicine and surgeries which save countless numbers of people.
There's herbal medicines that can actually prevent so many chronic diseases from becoming acute and life-threatening.
And there's so many other forms of therapies and massage therapy, acupuncture, homeopathic medicine.
All these things have their place and they have their time.
You have to sort of match up the appropriate therapy with the person.
And some people are not ready for herbal medicine.
Some people will not take the responsibility of herbal medicine.
Plant medicine requires your participation in your own health.
It also requires a tremendous degree of self-supervision and responsibility, which a lot of people seem to spend a lot of time ducking out of.
Absolutely.
In other words, if the doctor didn't tell me to do it, then I have no incentive to make sure I do this every three or four hours.
That's the problem with one aspect of the health care, is that we're looking to someone else to be the authority figure and to provide something for us, some answers, when what it's really about is us as individuals providing our own answers and becoming more self-sufficient when what it's really about is us as individuals providing our own answers and becoming more self-sufficient and more connected to the natural world and more responsible, not only politically, but for I mean, that's what Herb's has really done for me.
They have provided a peace of mind.
They have provided a hope.
They have provided a link back to the natural world.
And they have shown me, well, they've led me to St. John's, actually, to this conference.
I mean, everybody gets here a little bit differently.
But I think when you're on the road to looking for truth or you're on the road looking for responsibility, everybody will end up in the same place.
Well, that appears to be that way.
You know, my grandmother had an herbal recipe for us when we all got blocked up and everything, and she thought I'd share it with everybody.
When you're out on the rain, there's some extremes.
It's more kind of a bubble for me.
She is pork and meat.
If you come to step the bubble, well, you know what that means.
It's time to travel for me.
She is pork and meat.
She is pork and meat.
Is there anything to that?
Well, pork and beans.
We were talking about the dandelion leaf.
I think a lot of cans of pork and beans will definitely leave you feeling stomach congested, so you might want to consider something bitter to help stimulate that along.
And that's the dandelion leaves or some of the other things?
Absolutely.
You also talked about putrid swamps in Mexico where somebody pulled something out called, what was it?
The Yerba Manza.
The Yerba Manza.
No, he doesn't really recommend that you pull these things out of putrid swamps.
I think that it's important that people consider where these things come from because a lot of these herbs, if you get them from the wrong places, actually come from places that if people knew where they came from, they wouldn't be using them.
And that's one of the things that you stressed there.
You have to be careful about what you use, where you get it, how fresh it is, and who packed it, and whether it's got an aroma, and all of these things.
And I think that's important for people to know.
I didn't know that, and I had no idea that there might be some unethical behavior in the procurement of some of these things.
Well, I think there's some people that are in it just for the money.
There's some people who don't really understand the plans.
And the approach to herbal medicine that I like to teach is that people become their own herbalists.
Do not rely on commerce to supply you good quality herbs because you're not going to find it most often.
The only person to rely on is yourself.
And for you to have the knowledge, for you to know the plants that are around you, and to know how to use them, and to be able to pick them properly, and to steward them so that you do not overpick them, and you pick them in clean areas, and you do all the things necessary, to make the stands of herbs better. to make the stands of herbs better.
And stewardship is basically stewarding the herbs that are right around you.
Is it true that the fresher herbs are, the better they are for you?
Or can you get the same benefit from dried herbs?
Well, say I had a strip of aspen bark that I tacked to my wall and left it there for six months.
Would it still have the same properties and do the same thing six months later?
Well, something like aspen bark, if you just dried it in a little cardboard splatter on a screen and dried it and put it into a jar and left it as whole as possible, would be good for six months, maybe up to several years after the time you picked it.
If it was ground up and you bought it in capsules
You know, when these herbs are picked and they're shipped off to commerce and people then, the middle man then gets them and grinds them up and puts them in capsules and they go through the distributorship and all of commerce, by the time they make it to your health food store, your herb shop, and by the time they get to your hands where you're going to actually depend on them, they've, in general, they've lost 50% of their medicinal potential just by the sheer length of travel and by the sheer jet lag of going from
Their place of origin and then getting into the hands of commerce and being treated almost like prescription medicines.
And people really miss out when they just go out and buy these things in jars and they never get an opportunity to pick their own plants that are around them.
The thing that evolves for people when they actually do this ancient art form is amazing.
Your life really changes for the better when you pick your own plant medicines.
And a lot of these, as you pointed out, are within walking distance of almost anybody's home unless you live in a parking lot in Los Angeles.
Yeah, but even then you'll find, I don't know if I'd want to use them considering various polluting factors, but even then I've seen good herbal medicines growing in the cracks of sidewalks on Santa Monica Boulevard.
They're everywhere, and I don't know, some places they may not be clean enough to use, but once you start, once you become able to recognize and identify them, you really feel confident.
Everywhere you go, you recognize these old friends.
These medicines are everywhere.
They're just everywhere around us.
Our pharmacy is the world, once you have the knowledge, and once you decide to pursue that knowledge.
What does one do if...
For instance, you don't know anything about plants at all.
I mean, you don't even grow a potted plant in your house.
What does one do to become acquainted with the basics of plant identification and what plants you could, say, grind into a powder and put into capsules and use in your own home for better health?
For instance, I'll tell you right now, you don't want to do what I did and grab four inches of aspen bark and chew it all afternoon because it doesn't taste good at all.
but I could grind it up and put it in capsule form and swallow.
I was just in so much pain that I didn't care how bad it tasted at that point.
But you could put it in capsules and take it and not have to to mess with that taste whatsoever.
But how do people go about getting started like that?
I would say if there's no herbalist, if there's no botanist, if you do not have access to a library, definitely libraries.
Go to the library.
I mean hardly anybody seems to use libraries anymore.
There's many good books on herbal medicine and alternative medicine in most of the libraries.
But go to your kitchen cabinet and look at the spices.
If you have no plants growing in your house and you're totally house plant-less, and you're totally alien.
The natural world is totally alien.
The only thing that you see is sod, lawn every day.
Go to your kitchen counter.
Everybody uses spices.
They either use ginger, rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon.
All of these common spices as we consider them have medicinal uses in their countries of origin.
We use them in small amounts as spices.
If you grab a few books and start to read about them, you will find that each one of these common neglected spices are medicines that you've had in your kitchen cabinet.
Many people, I'm sure, have suffered with a headache, a migraine headache perhaps, or just an end-of-the-day type of headache.
Believe it or not, they probably had rosemary in their little spice jar in their kitchen, and if they had just known that it may be a quarter teaspoon of rosemary made as a tea, it could have been a good basal dilator.
It could have dilated and relaxed them and actually alleviated their headache.
Steeping the quarter teaspoon of rosemary leaves in hot water and then drinking the, what do they call it, the tea.
Okay.
Basically boiling a little water and pouring it into a cup, adding maybe a, like I say, a quarter teaspoon of the rosemary leaf and then letting it set in the cup for a good 10 to 15 minutes so that you actually use the water as a solvent to leach out the chemical constituents a quarter teaspoon of the rosemary leaf and then letting it set in the cup for a That's basically what a tea is, is a weak solvent that is pulling out the chemicals, the medicine out of the plant into the water so that we can drink it.
We don't have to chew on the plants and graze on them, which is another way of actually, you know, cooking with a lot of these things, actually bringing medicinal benefits.
But yeah, it's basically a tea.
Now, once one learns to identify the plants and everything, there's various methods of drawing out what you need from these plants to use, and one of the things you showed us is to use a solvent such as alcohol.
Now, there are many different kinds of alcohol out there, and some of them are quite deadly if you use them and drink them.
So what kind of alcohol would one use, number one, and how for the things that could be used with this alcohol?
Of course, you don't take a quart bottle of alcohol and soak some plants in it and then drink a quart bottle.
So as you very well pointed out, you use drops in something else and whatever it is that helps you is drawn out of the plants into this alcohol which acts as a solvent.
But what kind of alcohol specifically is best for that kind of thing and how do you treat the plant in order to get the alcohol to make the best use of what it can draw out of this Well, it seems to vary quite a bit.
Let's remember that teas, I mean, in the old days, whatever that means, but a long time A lot.
We grazed.
We were hunting and gathering and foraging and we would eat a greater variety of things than we do now.
Teas then evolved to be probably next to just eating the plants, tidbits of them.
Teas actually are a very adequate vehicle.
But some plants actually have a lot of barks and a lot of roots and sometimes gums or saps are not water soluble.
And so Things like vodka or a little rum or a little whiskey, or there are such things in parts of the country as Everclear, which is 96% alcohol.
And you said that that was really the best, was the 97% for doing this.
of all the alcohols that you can obtain from a liquor store or from a pharmacy, the main one to stay away from.
In our part of the country, we have sugarcane alcohol and that's 96, 97% alcohol.
And And it's a greater solvent.
It will pull more of the medicine out of many of the pieces of the plant material.
And that's where you really want to find somebody near you, or go to a seminar, or go to a place where they will actually teach you the old pharmaceutical techniques.
And this isn't something that new herbalists have made up.
This was the standard way with the little modifications to make it a little bit more exact.
This was the standard way that they made medicines in the 1800s.
And some of those were quite good.
In fact, from what I understand from some people who have developed a reputation for knowing what they're doing.
Some of those medicines are better than the medicines today that have taken their place and safer.
Absolutely.
Many, many, in fact, many of the big names in the pharmaceutical industry started out by making herbal extracts and at some point, somewhere along the way, there was a decision made to try to patent the herbs and to patent the plant materials, and it could not be done.
And so that was the beginning of the end for herbal medicine.
When it could not be owned, when it could not be controlled, pharmaceutical, refined drugs actually began to develop.
Okay, don't go away, folks.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
I love the job, the job that it loves me.
Coffee and tea, and the job I need.
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.
I love chowder sweet and hot.
Whoops, Mr. Moe, no, I'm a coffee pot.
Shoot me the spot and I'll pour me a shot.
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.
Oh, slip me a slug from that wonderful mug.
I'll cut a rug just like a plug in a jug.
A sliced up onion and a raw one.
Raw one.
Waiter, waiter, percolator.
I love toffee, I love tea.
I love the job, the job, and you love me.
Toffee and tea and chardonnay.
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup.
Oh!
Well, Michael, you feel like going to the phones?
Uh, yeah, let's do.
Okay, good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, Bill?
Yes?
I just wanted to know if y'all are on the satellite network as well.
Yes, we are.
Okay, could you tell me what the satellite channel is?
I'll be happy if you call tomorrow.
Tonight we've got a guest and I'd appreciate it if you guys would call in to talk to Michael because you're wasting our time.
He's only on here for one hour.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, I was wondering, is there any kind of natural air, a radio steam tank for hay fever?
What would you recommend?
Well, one of the first things that I found in my approach to herbal medicine was that people often don't drink enough water, believe it or not, and that with a lot of pollen ingestion, that I've found in my approach to herbal medicine was that people often don't drink enough water, believe it or not, and that with a lot of pollen ingestion, when people say they have hay fever or allergic reactions,
they're often referring to the fact that there's a lot they're often referring to the fact that there's a lot of pollen that is stuck up in their sinuses, and if you begin with by increasing your water, drinking more water will create movement in your body and actually help to eliminate the waste.
Some of the herbs to consider, you might consider improving your circulation in general, and a light cup of ginger tea, which ginger is pretty much available either in your spice cabinet or at the grocery store.
Taking a fresh root of ginger and grading it up to about a half teaspoon to a teaspoon per cup and steeping it in hot water for 10, 15 minutes, and then drinking that will improve circulation, and many of the problems I've seen over the years stem from two things, lack of circulation and many of the problems I've seen over the years stem from two things, lack of Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening.
Randy in the Chicago area.
I have a traditional male problem, a large problem.
I've got a herbal extract from Paranova repens, that's salt and metal berries.
And then there's another one that came out fairly recently called Pygium africanum.
You know, we need you to put your mouthpiece right in front of your mouth and talk directly into your phone if you can.
I'm talking tight into it, how's that?
That's much better.
Okay, I'm taking a herbal extract for BPH, enlarged prostate.
salt pimento berries, or then there's a new one called Africanum pygium.
I'm taking an herbal extract, and I'm also not taking it, but I'm curious about the efficacy of the encapsulated fatty portions.
Can you comment on that?
Well, salt pimento has a good history of actually helping with inflammation and of the prostate and urinary tract inflammation.
The results you'll get will depend on the quality of the saw palmetto.
One also must look at the lymph system.
I found in my work with the prostate and other pelvic congested problems is that we have a tendency to be eating a lot of fatty foods, a lot of heavy oils, partially hydrogenated oils are very congesting for the lymph glands.
The lymph glands in the body really need to be free flowing, be allowed to process a lot of, be allowed to move a lot of waste through.
When our diet is heavy in fats, we don't drink enough water, we don't exercise, we don't actually, we're not moving our bodies enough, our lymph system will tend to be congested.
So, you might consider cutting back on the oils, the heavy fats, finding herbs.
that red root is a Cianothus americanus.
There's different species of red root and reading up on it because that is a very good lymphatic herb, which will help to move and strengthen, help to move the lymph flow and help to strengthen the lip tissue and exercise.
your lower waist more and drink more water, improve your lymph circulation and stay with salt palmetto for a while because it has a good reputation of actually being perfect for that particular problem.
Is that the one that you told us yesterday was specifically good for prostate problems?
We talked about the red root and out west here we have a thing called Ocotillo which is a cactus, a relative of the cactus.
It's I think it's a relative of the octopus.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly.
It looks like a land octopus with his legs stretched up towards the sky.
The bark from the ocotillo helps with pelvic congestion and lymphatic movement.
You might also, if you have, people that have prostate problems often have other pelvic problems.
They often have varicose veins because they have poor venous return, they have poor circulation How are you guys?
Missed a conference.
Shame on you.
Good evening earlier.
a history of urinary tract infections.
Hello.
You need to improve the circulation down below.
And that's one of the best ways to approach.
And you can do that dietary-wise and herbal-wise and exercise-wise.
Oh, you guys missed a conference.
Shame on you.
Good evening, early.
Hello.
Goodbye.
If you call in, folks, you might have to stay on hold for a little while.
And if you're not willing to do that, don't call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
Hi, Bill.
God bless you.
Thank you.
You're doing a fantastic job.
I have a question for Mike, though.
Mike, I do have a little bit of a problem, and I'm not kidding.
After I drank a few bottles of beer, I do experience a pain in my stomach.
What could I use to alleviate the pain?
Well, first off, I'm a clinical herbalist, and none of this information, I'm not diagnosing anyone's problems, and only a medical doctor can make official diagnosis.
And that's how I work well in Clover City.
It's when often people will come in with these problems that I have no diagnostic tools for.
I may have an idea, but I'm overstepping my bounds, and I will refer them to a doctor to get a diagnosis.
And then with that diagnosis, it's much, much easier to pinpoint what herbs may be necessary.
If you are drinking excess amount of alcohol and it's been going on for a long period of time, your liver may be deficient.
When you go in for your diagnosis, which is the first thing I would recommend, and see what you're finding out from the doctor.
And that would be it.
You would be able to make so much more headway as far as matching up the herbs for the problem.
That's what I'd like to do is match the ability of Western medicine and the technology and some of the diagnostic skills that are unsurpassed in our technology here and match them up with alternatives if they're at all appropriate.
But in my experience a lot of people that have drunk excess amounts of alcohol You're welcome.
liver deficiencies.
Let's face it, too much alcohol can cause cirrhosis of the liver.
Some of the problems you can have associated with, some of the symptoms associated with cirrhosis of the liver, in my experience, is pain in the stomach, pain in the right side and such.
And now this is an empirical observation, not a medical diagnosis.
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Well, folks, what you're hearing tonight from Michael is just indicative of what everybody here has been hearing from everybody who has been speaking here.
We've been having an awful good time, and there are some good people here.
Crazy people, crazy people, crazy people like Niko, crazy over people like you.
Loopy people, dappy people, dappy people like Niko, crazy over things like you.
While we are underneath the moon, the moon above, you've got me acting up like a moon, it must be the people.
Crazy people, crazy people, crazy people.
Is that about to describe everybody here?
Well, crazy from the pressure of the days.
But I'll tell you, I'm so happy that I was able to make it.
Crazy people like crazy like...
I mean, it's so nice to be around this many people that share some of the same concerns.
I mean, it makes me feel like how it must have felt in Philadelphia when those true patriots got together, or true concerned citizens, true concerned human beings, worried about their family, worried about their friends, worried about their country.
And getting together, there's been a lot of information to process, more information than I ever imagined, but it's been excellent.
Well, let's get back to your specialty.
I was amazed at some of the things that you told us that we could do with plants, things for rashes.
I mean, that just blew my mind that you could take plants and use them to reduce and over a period of time actually eliminate tumors.
Well, there is a plant that has been scrutinized and subjected to a lot of political pressure, the lorea tridentata or the chaparral or greasewood that grows in the southwest.
Now what's amazing to me about that is I know parts of Texas where you can't ride a horse for a hundred miles because the chaparral is taking over the land and there's so much of it there that you could cure all the tumors in the world if this really works.
At one time I heard there's a really good book called Gathering the Desert I believe by Gary Paul Mabahan which describes, has a great chapter on chaparral And at one time, they were actually considering putting out NDGA extraction sites.
Now, NDGA is the anti-tumor dissolving acid that's in Chaparral.
And at one time, it was consideration of actually establishing these extraction sites out in the desert to extract this.
And at some point, it just never manifested.
It was, you know, let's face it, things that are very effective for the health, I don't I don't know if it's in my experience.
I wouldn't call it suppression.
I wouldn't call it... I just find that... I think the right term is it threatens somebody else's source of income.
There's billions of dollars at stake when you make people healthy.
There are other people on the other side of the coin that lose money when people are healthy.
I mean, that's a sad state of affairs, but that's the way I see it after all these years of doing herbal medicine is the billions of dollars that are at stake when people are sick.
The profits to be made is just it's criminally it's evil in my opinion.
And it's not just that.
There is a policy that was decided years ago that says we have to begin to cut back on the population.
And therefore it is not in the best interest of those who rule to allow people to get really healthy.
Absolutely.
And from what I know about that policy, it seems to be true.
And there seems to be, I mean, every effort to get people sicker and sicker.
And all you have to do is look at your food.
You know, in my opinion, 90% of what's at the grocery store is unfit to eat.
And that's one of our biggest problems.
Food is the best medicine.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, Bill.
Hi, Michael.
Hi, this is Lucy from Texas and it seems like every time I turn around I'm hearing about someone I work with coming up with breast cancer or cancer of the ovaries, fists, things like that and I wanted to know what you could tell me about Essiac.
I knew someone was going to bring that up but that's okay because that's a very popular formula these days.
And a lot of people are using it.
It's SEX stems from a lady, a nurse, Renee Castia.
Right.
And she supposedly got this formula from a medicine man up in Canada.
And she used it and was starting to get, there's a lot of documentation that she was sent a lot of terminally ill patients with both truly diagnosed cancer and misdiagnosed cancer.
I mean, the AMA had, I read somewhere a statistic that said 25% of all diagnoses are inaccurate.
So sometimes people are actually diagnosed with something and they really don't have it.
And so they may do something and it may seem to actually benefit them.
And so it gets this reputation.
And that may be a small part of it.
But the Essiac, the herbs in the Essiac formula, the sheep's sorrel, the slippery elm bark, the turkey rhubarb and the burdock, help the body at the least to eliminate more waste.
They help the liver, the kidneys, the intestinal tract, the whole waste process, the whole excretion and elimination of waste.
They increase that and they do it very effectively.
And since a lot of our food creates waste that is very toxic and very carcinogenic, the Essiac key at least will help to increase waste output, which can help cancerous problems and can help in just in general improve the health.
Um...
But there's a lot of people that read about the SAFT and get the various books out there, they actually can see, and Renee Cassie's story is an amazing beautiful story, her fight with the Canadian government and it's just You know, it's well worth reading because it shows you another aspect.
Many of the cancer therapies have been suppressed and downplayed and torn apart by various establishments and various businesses just because they worked.
And there are many other alternatives besides SCFT, one of which is to strive to eat more organic food, more clean food.
Whether it's meat or vegetables or water, the goal is to actually strive for cleaner Food and water.
That will prevent more cancer than any herbal teas and any magic formula out there.
Do you know if Effiac has the capability to build up the immune system like for AIDS patients?
I think the fact that it can eliminate waste will take the pressure off the immune system.
functions, if our body's ability to eliminate waste is impaired because we have too much of it or we're weak from our food or sick from, you know, just that simple fact of getting more waste out of the body will definitely take less, will improve the immune system just that simple fact of getting more waste out of the body will definitely take less, will improve the immune system by just allowing
If our body is fatigued and stressed because we can't even simply excrete more waste, definitely our immune system is going to be fatigued and definitely Asiac-T can actually improve the immune system by that function.
Okay, also I've read that dandelion root will help with hepatitis.
Have you heard that?
I have.
There's several books.
We'll mention that.
Okay.
I'm not quite sure of the exact action of it.
It does stimulate liver enzymes.
It does stimulate the liver.
Hepatitis is, from the best I can remember the definition, is an inflammation of the liver due to a pathogen or due to an infestation.
I can't remember if it's a bacteria or a virus.
Dandelion can be cooling to the liver and help to stimulate the liver to improve its functions a little bit better.
So when you're stressed, under stress from hepatitis, dandelion has been traditionally used with good success by many herbalists that I know of.
Okay, good.
Well thanks a lot.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you for calling.
Now when you say cooling, you don't mean temperature wise.
That's a description of something else and you talked yesterday about hot Right.
Good point.
I mean, organ systems seem to get cold, congested, or stagnant, and often they can go the opposite direction.
They can get excessive, hot, and heating.
And I'm kind of like taking from the Chinese and taking from my own observations, because the Chinese talk in a lot of those cooling, stagnant things.
My tradition has been sort of scraped together from the Mexican herbal tradition, from Chinese herbal medicine, from my own observations, from, I mean, people may be interested out there.
I've gone to, I have a degree or diploma in clinical herbology, but it's absolutely worthless because it's like, it's not a recognized medical profession in this country yet.
It's been hundreds of authors and hundreds of people that I've met that have added to my knowledge and actually just getting out there, learning the plants around me and doing it and gaining the respect of the medical establishment and knowing my boundaries, knowing when I don't know something about the human body because there's no sense in taking chances with it.
You know, that's one thing that I really like about you, Michael.
You're incredibly honest about what you do and what you can do and what you can't do.
Don't rule out all the other methods of healing and helping and making people healthy.
And I've met so many people.
For instance, I've met herbalists who say, well, herbs are the only way to go.
Don't ever go to a doctor.
Don't do this.
Don't do that.
And I've met doctors who say, you know, medicine and pharmaceuticals are the only thing that will help you.
And I've talked to other people who are just as rigid and stuck in their ways.
And to me, that's like being constipated.
It's one of the things I like to teach about when I teach herbal first aid or herbal paramedicine or what have you, is that first aid is the first thing you do and it's with whatever tools you have on hand.
If I have a broken leg, I'm going to need a lot of pain.
I'm going to want to go to the emergency room and have somebody professionally set it.
But I'm going to use herbs instead of antibiotics.
And I'm going to use herbs instead of some of the pharmaceutical painkillers.
We can use it all.
We just need to want to do it and need to wake up to all the different alternatives of medicine that are out there.
You know, one of the things that often comes up on this broadcast when people call in, especially if we're doing a program on how to survive.
what to put in your kit for later use if you have to head to the hills or something.
And one of the things that always comes up is how do you purify water?
How do you get Guardia out of the water?
How do you get germs out of the water?
How do you make sure that you're not going to get some parasite or some terrible disease from drinking water?
And it's all, you know, people spend a lot of time thinking about this and putting chlorine drops in and getting iodine things, and they have tablets, and you boil your water and all this, and you just went over and picked something off a tree and threw it in there and and you just went over and picked something off a tree and threw it in there And according to what you taught us, this will kill everything and then work.
There's a lot of good herbs out there that actually are antipungal and antiparasitic and also antibiotic.
And, well, similar to antibiotic.
I like to think of instead of antibiotic, they're immunostimulants.
Because antibiotic means anti-life.
And that's what antibiotics do very good.
They go into the body and kill everything.
And when you have a need for antibiotics, it's important to use them.
Everywhere in the country there's really good antifungals, antiparasitics, things like black walnut, things like sage, things like wormwood.
Nobody's without a good anti-parasitic, and all these things could be put into water, into your canteen, into five-gallon buckets of water, in various amounts to kill the parasites in there that, in turn, could actually damage you.
What was this mossy substance that you recommended to us?
That was called Oosnia, and it droops down, it's a lichen, and it droops down off of the trees in the high mountains off of fir and spruce trees.
It sort of looks like Spanish moss that you see from the south, but it's totally unrelated botanically to that.
Well, thank you, Michael, and thank you for being our guest tonight.
And thank you so much for that wonderful presentation you did yesterday and you offered to help us out.
And I think I'm going to take you up on it.
I think Michael's going to be a regular at least maybe once a month or maybe once every two months, whatever he has time for on this show, because I think that he has the capability of helping an awful lot of people.
Good night, folks.
And God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night.
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