The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Exploring Herbal Medicine’s Role in Modern Health Solutions with Bonnie D’Arcangelo

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Exploring Herbal Medicine's Role in Modern Health Solutions with Bonnie D'Arcangelo Bonniedarcangelo.com Aetherbal.com About the Guest(s): Bonnie D'Arcangelo is a distinguished clinical herbalist and holistic health consultant with a Master of Science in Herbal Medicine. She is a certified aromatherapist with the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy and the co-founder of E Thal. Bonnie is also the founder of the Be Yu Phytotherapy Center, where she focuses on integrating herbal medicine with holistic health strategies. With a deep commitment to the plant world, she has developed a range of topical herbal products designed to address various health issues and improve overall wellbeing. Bonnie is also actively involved in conservation efforts to protect medicinal plants through her non-profit organization, Michigan Protects. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, Chris Voss converses with Bonnie D'Arcangelo, a seasoned herbalist and holistic health consultant. The episode dives into Bonnie's expansive journey in the realm of herbal medicine, her development of unique topical products, and her dedication to integrating traditional practices with modern medicine. As a mother of four, Bonnie shares her personal and professional journey, emphasizing the importance of natural remedies and her drive to innovate the field of herbal therapy. Bonnie discusses the inception of her companies and the challenges faced in the entrepreneurial journey. She introduces her line of topical products enriched with scientific innovations like ortho silicic acid and comprehensive herbal blends aimed at alleviating pain and improving health. Topics such as bridging conventional and herbal medicine, the necessity for FDA regulatory changes in herbal products, and Bonnie's non-profit efforts to preserve endangered medicinal plants are explored. Emphasizing a holistic approach, Bonnie shares insightful narratives on the emotional foundations of physical ailments and the synergistic relationship between humans and plants. Key Takeaways: Integration of Herbal and Conventional Medicine: Bonnie advocates for a blended approach, combining herbal remedies with conventional Western treatments for a more holistic health strategy. Innovative Topical Products: Her line of advanced herbal topicals utilizes orthosilicic acid and specific medicinal plants to treat various pain-related conditions effectively. Entrepreneurial Journey: Bonnie's transition from a goldsmith to an entrepreneur highlights the challenges and rewards of pursuing one's passion in herbal medicine. Non-Profit Conservation Efforts: Through Michigan Protects, Bonnie works to ensure the future of herbal medicine by planting and conserving medicinal plants. Holistic Health Consultations: Bonnie’s consultations emphasize the connection between emotional wellbeing and physical health, aiming to uncover underlying factors in chronic conditions. Notable Quotes: "There's a perfect, beautiful blend for both conventional and herbal medicine if the two sides can learn to work together." "We want to ensure that herbal medicine is around for not just the next seven generations, but thousands of years beyond ourselves." "Herbs are different than pharmaceuticals. They're trying to balance out what has gone awry in the body and bring it back to homeostasis." "We really need to see a change in our country if we want America to become healthy again." "Develop a relationship with one plant. There's a symbiotic thing that starts to occur when you develop a deeper relationship with the plants."

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reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show. Today we're going to be talking to her, some of her discussions about being a master herbalist and herbal medicine, and some of the different things that she does as a consultant and as her business as well. Today, we're going to be talking with Bonnie D. Arcangelo about her business and what she does. She is a clinical herbalist and holistic health consultant with a master of science in herbal medicine. She is a certified

aromatherapist with the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy. She's also the co-founder of E-Therbal and is the founder of VEUSAE-BEIU Phytotherapy Center. I think I got that right. She is the herbal formulator of ETH Herbals, technical or topical products that blend science and herbal medicine to provide advanced delivery of medicinal herbs. She's helped hundreds. Welcome to the show. How are you, Bonnie? Thank you.

I'm great. I got to give you my life challenge, which is to make you say difficult words. I really love to do that to people. Pete Slauson Is that why people are coming on this show is just to test my, I mean, there's a callback joke that I flunked second grade, so there's that. Jodi I really love to throw people for a loop with my business names and I always joke with my website developer. I said one day, I'm just going to come up with a website that's Bob's Pizzeria so that you don't have anything hard to say.

Pete Slauson Bob's Taco Joint, you know, simple stuff. Bonnie, give us a dot coms. Where do you want people to find out on the interims more about you? Bonnie DeArcangelo Make that really easy. You can go to bonniedearcangelo.com and on there, you will find links to all of my businesses, my websites, my social media. It's a nice one-stop shop. So, it's just my name without the apostrophe and the Diarganjilo. Pete Slauson So, 30,000 overview, what you do there at your company?

Anna So, I have a couple different companies. My main focus, like in general, is about herbal medicine. So, I also have a non-profit, we can talk about that a little bit later. But my mission in life is really to help people live healthier lives and to manage some of their chronic medical conditions or their day-to-day needs with herbal medicine. And I find that it's really important. You know, it's in the world, we kind of have an either or. Either you're going to a conventional doctor or you're going to a naturopathic doctor. And my belief is that there is a perfect, beautiful blend for the both of them in the middle if the two sides can learn to work together There's a lot of research, especially in other countries that herbal medicine can help to benefit

Conventional medicine in many ways so it can help to support antibiotic therapy by making it more effective It can also help to support cancer therapy by making chemotherapy More effective and to have less negative effects on the person's overall health effective. It can also help to support cancer therapy by making chemotherapy more effective and to have less negative effects on the person's overall health. So, it's one of my really big missions to try and get people to understand that there is a place for both of them in our lives. Pete Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a lot of natural medicine that's very healthy out there. I found that when I started doing edibles and they made them legal in Las Vegas, I found that when I started doing edibles and they made them legal in Las Vegas, it made it so that I wasn't taking Tylenol all the time.

I went six months without taking Tylenol and one day I walked in the bathroom and was like, what is a Tylenol bottle in here? Holy crap, I haven't taken Tylenol for all this while because the relaxing and healing effects of the herbal medicine made all the difference. And there's lots of examples of that in our culture and what we're doing. So you make these topicals that people can order. You sent some to sample and they come in little jars, these topical ointments. Tell us about how they work and some of the different variations that you have in your

product line. Yeah. So that's one of my biggest passions. So, our kind of catchphrase for the business is what ails you. And it comes from the story of Parseval and the Grail King. So, Parseval was a knight of King Arthur and he had this, you could call it a chance meeting with the Grail King at the Grail Castle. And he was party to all these, like, extraordinary things in this feast. And the whole time he's at this feast, he really wants to ask the Grail King some questions. But on his prior journeys, he was criticized for asking too

many questions. And so, he didn't ask the King any questions. And the next morning, he's ejected from the Grail Castle, unable to find his way back. It kind of goes through the whole story. And you know that he was supposed to ask a question, but you don't know what it was. At the end, find out that he was supposed to ask the Grail king what ails him. Because by asking him what ails him

or what is hurting him, he would have set the Grail king free from his suffering. So my topic of company is a way of asking people, what ails you and how can I help set you free from your suffering? They primarily focus on pain. Of course, they're topicals, so they're not internal supplements that are helping to correct what has gone kind of awry in the body, but they're very effective and they're very effective

for one primary reason that sets all of our herbal products apart from other herbal products on the marketplace. Most herbal ingredients utilize a base carrier. And that base carrier doesn't really have a purpose. It's whatever makes it a cream or an ointment or an oil. And those don't really have a therapeutic benefit. And our tropicals, our base carrier is orthosalicylic acid. So we have a proprietary blend that we call silicon plasma hydrate. And what this is, is a water soluble form of silica, which is essential in the body for building connective tissues like collagen, elastin, cartilage. So it's the base ingredient is delivering a high potency

kind of supplement that's helping to repair damage, not just mask pain. And our orthosalicylic acid is different than other orthosalicylic acid on the market because it's in the form of a plasma. So what that is, is most people are familiar with three phases of water. You have solid, liquid, and gaseous.

But there's actually a fourth phase of water, and that's a plasma. And this is the same state that the water in our body is contained in. If you think about it, we're 60 to 65% water, and we don't just have water pouring out of our pores. And that's because the water is structured water or a plasma. And so it's like a gel-like state. And the importance about plasma is that it conducts electromagnetic energy and it's highly ionized, which is akin to alkaline water, which is very ionized water. And so not only is it delivering this macronutrient silicon, it's also helping to balance out the energetics of the body and reconnect our

nervous system signals throughout the body. So it's repairing on many different levels. And then we use that as our base ingredient and we add on top of that very specific herbal medicinal plants that help to deliver some potent medicine to alleviate pain. We have products for neuropathy, fibromyalgia. We even have products that people have used when they've had an amputation on their leg. And one of the big struggles with people who've had an amputation is they have a lot of phantom pain. So this is a magnetic connection between the brain that recognizes that there's supposed

to be a limb there, and then the lack of the nerve conduction. So by having this energetic rebalancing of these signals, we're able to help people to stop their phantom pain, which is really incredible because there's nothing out there on the market to help with that type of pain. Pete I need something that can guard me from stupid people. Do you have anything like that? Because there's a lot going around right now. Debra You might need to like talk to a gemologist

or somebody who can recommend some crystals that'll keep it out of your field. Pete I need a spaceship so I can go to another planet at this point. And how did you develop these? What was the, tell us kind of the backstory of starting this company. How many years ago did you start it? What was your journey like as an entrepreneur? The entrepreneur journey is always a challenging one, but as far as orthosalicic acid goes, my business partner is my husband and he had been working on this form of orthosalicylic acid

long before I met him. So he had about seven years of research and development into it. And then I came along with my masters of science background in herbal medicine. And I said, this is really good for helping to rebuild these connective tissues, but what if we added some herbal medicine into it

to kind of direct it for certain types of pains and conditions? And so we work to add the two of them together and we actually have a patent pending on our formulas because we created an amphiphilic formula. So it's really popular right now to have liposomal supplements because these kind of deliver a supplement that can pass by those digestive systems. But what we really need is what's called an amphiphilic delivery system because this is a water and an oil molecule blend. So they're held together in solution. And this is really important because it mimics our body's cells, which have a lipid bilayer that has a water-loving tail and an oil-loving tail. So we're mimicking the body's own cells so the body is more likely to recognize it as self and thus take it deeper

into the cell and into the mitochondrial tissue. So lots of science behind it that went into this development. And we're still working on developing new products. We have a lot of requests from people for specific medical conditions that they're suffering from, that we work to develop things to help them to alleviate that pain, kind of always working on that goal of what ails you and how can we be of service to humanity? And I think that's really the entrepreneurial journey. I worked for over a decade as a goldsmith. That was my first degree in school. And there was fun parts to my job, certainly, but I, while I was doing a service to people, I wasn't really serving humanity in what I thought was my highest good.

And so the transition into entrepreneurship kind of happened overnight when I got laid off my job. I was like, do I go find a new job or do I bite the bullet and follow my dreams? Wow. And so, I bit the bullet as a mom of four, knowing that it would be really, really tough. Mom of four, yeah, I have four kids. Wow. And it was really tough financially. To balance both of those, you know, time-wise.

Everything. Yeah. Yeah. I told my kids, I said, look, like, this is my opportunity to follow my dreams. Do you want your mom to be happy and follow her dreams or do you want to have lots of money? Which one is it? Do you want your mom to be miserable because you guys got in the way of her dreams?

Anyways, I'm just making jokes. But no, I mean, I think, I think that's a, you know, one of the things people listen to on the show is the success of other people like yourself is being entrepreneurs and you know, it's a tough journey and it's wrought with failure. And you know, hearing stories like yours of where people are going through the challenges of stuff. I think it's great how you, you,'s great how you found a partner in life that's not only a partner in a relationship but also a partner that you can merge your two sort of experiences, your knowledge and

your education into a way that can make everything work for everybody. And now you're helping other people and that's the real beauty of entrepreneurism is we develop things that can help, you know, move and change the world. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's one of my biggest passions is moving and changing the world around me. Last year I founded a nonprofit called Michigan Protects and it was kind of my response to what was happening in the herbal medicine community. A lot of the medicinal herbs are wild harvested, and that's because they live in the forest and depend upon the forest microbiome for their existence, such like herbs like American ginseng, which is very, very popular. And it's endangered for extinction. And in Michigan, it's gone extinct

and it's only cultivated in certain locations. And so my nonprofit was founded to plant and protect these medicinal herb plants out in the wild. So every year we go out and we plant thousands of medicinal plants out in the wild on conservation lands and preserves. And we even work with private landowners who want to kind of create a plant sanctuary for some of these botanicals, because we want to ensure that herbal medicine is around for

not just the next seven generations, but thousands of years beyond ourselves. And so a lot of my work is not just giving herbal medicine to people, but it's also giving back to the herbs themselves to make sure that they can survive for our future kids. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the stuff that's naturally in our environment was meant to heal us, you know?

They didn't have pharmaceuticals when we were cavemen. At least I don't think so. I'll have to check the records. Evidently, I'm old enough now to know. My son always calls me a dinosaur, so. Cut him out of the will. Sorry kid, but you had to come. So some of the different things you profile on your website, there's some thing for varicose veins, some from Lip Care, topicals, some different things, Silico Plus, I can't skip the Hem Maya for comedy, but there is actually a topical for hemorrhoids. So if you have a topical,

or if you have those issues, you know who to turn to. And some Mooncare, tell us about some of these bottles that I see on your website and what sells well and why it does. 7.30 Yeah, so I would say our two most popular topicals are going to be the Three Kings Silica Plus, and that one's the one that's really great for pain, inflammation, injuries, people with arthritis, pain. It's kind of got like a wide blanket with its herbal selections, so like a wide range of pain in the joints, in the body, injuries are really covered from that one. And that's our most popular one. It works really well

in two to three minutes of application to soothe away pain. And then our second most popular one is the Yorn New Path. And that's the one that people who are suffering from neuropathy or amputations find to be the most effective because it's really geared towards the restructuring of the signals of the nervous system of the body to help to kind of calm those pain signals. Because a lot of times what's happening is the nerve is just signaling and signaling and it can kind of get stuck like on an on button and it needs a shut off switch so that that nerve pain can stop. And as long as that nerve pain signal is on, the body is not able to move into other phases of healing.

So the first step is to kind of shut off that signal so that the body can start to heal and repair. So those are two most popular. There are other topicals on there that have some funny humorous names like hemiroids, because I said to my husband, I said, we got to have a little humor in this business too. We can't be all serious. And that's one of my favorites. My son who calls me a dinosaur, it finds that one embarrassing and has said many times like, please take that down, mom. And then the other one is itchy, itchy, ick-a-body, which came from a Dr. Seuss book. And I always just liked that phrase. I thought it was funny. And you know, when I was making a topical product for people's skin,

I was like, I have to use that name. It's just my absolute favorite name that I have. Yeah, so a little bit of humor has to be in our lives. Like pain is such a serious thing. And so, I try and make my customers laugh a little. Pete And the human skin is like, what, the largest organ on the human body? So, these topicals are really important for the different things that go on with our bodies and what we absorb, I guess, too. 7 Yeah, we really, people really need to think about that. It is the largest organ in your body and the things that we apply on our skin are directly absorbed. If we think about the things that we eat,

our body has natural built-in filtration systems like our kidneys and our liver, but our skin does not filter out toxins, heavy metals, chemicals, all of that is going right into your bloodstream. And that's part of what makes topical application so effective is because when you're taking oral herbal supplements, it has to go through some digestive processes and our absorption rates are very minimal. But when it's applied directly to the skin, we get a much higher absorption rate and it's not going through those metabolite processes where you may lose some of the efficacy of the herbal medicine, same as you would with any kind of pharmaceutical drugs as well.

So yeah, we really need to take care of everything from perfumes and lotions and soaps that we are putting on our skin are going right into our bodies. Yeah. I mean, that's why I always rub myself down with Chernobyl ointment. No, don't put that on your skin. That's why I always rub myself down with Chernobyl ointment. Now don't put that on your skin, that's really bad. That sounds like it's a complete radiation. You've got the different products you've developed. How many years you guys have been doing this? Dr. Sarah Pfeiffer So we formed the business last May, so we're still in our first year, but we had

long time of development and research into it. You know, a lot of the topicals came out of some of my research for my master thesis where I focused on diabetic wounds and looking at herbal medicines that could help to heal diabetic wounds. Amputations from diabetic wounds are one of the leading causes of amputations in the United States with hundreds of thousands of amputations. And I really got passionate about this journey when I was talking to somebody early in the development stages of it. And they told me a story about their aunt. And she was a child during the Armenian genocide and had came over here to the United States, had to leave all of her family behind and was adopted by a family here in the US and had survived only to end her life being diabetic, like many Americans are, and having diabetic wounds and slowly losing part after part of her body

until, as he described her when she died, she was nothing but a body with arms and a head. And it really bothered him that this woman who he saw as a strong person who had survived genocide, to end their life in a hospital bed in that kind of condition. And he really pushed me. He said, you have the knowledge and wisdom to help people and you have to do something with it, or you are doing a disservice to humanity. And so that person pushed me into forming a company and to working towards getting my products out there.

It's a challenging thing because the way that our structure in the US with herbal medicine is set up is very different than it is in a lot of other countries. So we have a lot of FDA regulations that make it very challenging for us to put our product out there. So for instance, the one that originally was developed off that research, I cannot market it

as a product for diabetic wounds because that would be an FDA violation. It could come after me for this conversation and in of itself. And so that's another part of like my big passion is that we really need to see a change in our country. If we really want America to become healthy, we really need to change the way that we really need to see a change in our country. If we really want America to become healthy, we really need to change the way that we view herbal medicine.

So the government has these monographs that are for pharmaceutical drugs for like over-the-counter medications. So if I was to make an hemorrhoid ointment and I wanted it validated by the FDA as an over-the-counter medication, it would have to include something from their list of approved medications for hemorrhoids.

And what I envision as the future of herbal medicine is having a similar structure for our natural herbal extracts and having these monographs that are approved by the FDA. So that if those are included in a topical preparation for hemorrhoids, say for instance, horse chestnut, which is well known and historically used for hemorrhoid treatment, or even things like witch hazel, which is a very popular treatment, natural treatment for hemorrhoids,

that if the product includes one of those herbal ingredients, we can market it as an over the counter herbal product for, say, for instance, hemorrhoids. And that's my vision for the future. If I could get my five minutes in front of, you know, RFK or President Trump and be like, look, if you really want to make America healthy again, like this is what you have to do. You have to have a pathway for herbal medicine to be able to sell and market their products to the public.

For instance, like our product that people have used on their neuropathy. I can't use the word neuropathy on my website. That would be an FDA violation of a structured function claim. So, how does somebody who's suffering from neuropathy find a product to help them with their pain? Especially, we're talking about conditions where there is no pharmaceutical remedy for them. So So these people have no answers, not in conventional medicine, but there are options for them in the herbal medicine category. We just don't have a way to get those in the public view. Pete And it's interesting, you know, some of the different aspects of all this and what goes into it.

I know you have one that's called Mama's Best Friend. That sounds like the Rolling Stones song, Mother's Little Helper. Is that, what's up with that? Kirsten Well, that's not, that's my response for being a mama for. I have three boys. So you can imagine the number of injuries, bumps, bruises and things that happen with three boys running around the house like wild little feral beings. And so I love arnica ointment that I get at just a conventional store. And I always thought because arnica is a homeopathic remedy.

I never looked at the ingredients list on the back of my arnica ointment. And I go through several tubes of arnica ointment on a regular basis in this household. And one day my husband said to me, he said, have you ever looked at these ingredients? And I said, no, I didn't. I just assumed it's a homeopathic product. It's going to have natural ingredients. And he showed me the list and I was absolutely horrified. I said, I don't want to put that on my kids anymore. And I said, but I love my arnica because it works so well to cut down the swelling and the bruising from their injuries and really help them with their pain. So the mom's best friend is my version of a natural arnica homeopathic copicle that also has herbal medicine infused into it. And so it's every mom's best friend

because what do we have to deal with on a daily basis? Our injuries and boo-boos and kisses only go so far to make the tears stop before you have to deal with on a daily basis are injuries and boo-boos and kisses only go so far to make the tears stop before you have to have something to actually help them with their pain. I love it. Mom's a little helper and all that good stuff. Now, I noticed you guys not only do retail on your website, there's a wholesale function as well. Tell us a little bit about how that works for people that might want to do business with you in the future. Yeah. So we do offer wholesale options for anybody who has a sales tax ID. So we mostly work with chiropractors. They're a large number of chiropractors who use our products because

they find them to be a very effective kind of adjunct treatment with chiropractic therapy. A lot of times you go in a chiropractor, if you're in pain, they do an adjustment, but the pain doesn't go away instantly. And so our topicals are really wonderful to put on, per se, after a chiropractic adjustment to kind of help with the immediate pain while your body works to reset and heal itself. Excuse me. And then we are working to get into some retail stores and kind of spread our reach so that we're more widely available to the public and that people can find us in their own location. So again, we're a newer business. We just kind of opened our doors last year,

but already we're available on a lot of retail outlets. Pete That's awesome, Soss. That's awesome, Soss. Get it out there, share it and spread the message far and wide. Now on your personal website, is there anything more you do? Have we talked about the phytotherapy center and some of the consulting or stuff that you might do? Yeah, so we haven't really talked about that. I am the founder of the Yusebiyah Phytotherapy Center, and it was set up to be a place where people can come to not just receive holistic health consultations, but also to learn and

educate. So, working towards in the future holding more free public classes so that people can come and learn about herbal medicine and how they can implement it into their daily lives. Like for instance, you talked about the Tylenol. So a lot of people use Tylenol to reduce fevers for the young children when they're sick, but Tylenol is known to cause liver damage. And so you have to be really careful about your use, especially with young children. And so there's a lot of herbal remedies that can help to dentally reduce fevers and to

calm the little ones when they're sick. So that's kind of part of the side mission. But at Vayu-Sibia, I offer holistic health consultation services and have a full apothecary so I can serve the public with herbal medicine. And I have kind of a different approach to how I do my consultation services. They're based a lot off of the train of thought of motivational interviewing, if you've ever heard of that. And it's really helping to work to draw out of the person their own healing mechanisms. So it's not just me giving you advice. Well, I may advise you on the right choice of herbs for your specific condition.

This is really about helping the person to find their own inner path to wellness so that they can move towards a path of healing that doesn't just end at my doorstep with some supplements and herbs that it kind of infuses into their whole life. And I have found that, you know, it works really well. I don't just meet with my clients for an hour and give them some recommendations and they leave. We meet on a bi-weekly basis so that I can touch base with them, see how they're doing, see how they're feeling about their path, see where we can work towards adjusting some things to make this work for their life and their lifestyle. And it deepens the relationship between the practitioner and the client. And as I've gotten to know people more and

more, I have come to find out that the real reason for disease, or as I like to refer to it as dis-ease, is not really a physical finding. It's actually a psychological emotional. Like, I always saw the story of one of my clients who I worked with for a long time, and she was suffering from a number of chronic illnesses. And she was doing pretty well and we were making a lot of headway. But it wasn't until she finally opened up and told me that, you know, what she was really suffering from was guilt as a mom because her son had committed suicide. Pete Slauson Oh, no.

Anna Winkler And it was a sudden realization and I knew what herbs she needed. You know, and the herbs are these beautiful gifts of the earth. They don't just treat physical symptoms. They work really well on an emotional level as well. And as soon as she told me that, I went to my herb cabinet and I was like, this is the herb you need. It's motherwort.

And this is for the wounded mother. It's for the wounded mother and us all. And it has a lot of healing properties. And herbs are different than pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are created with a very direct purpose. They go into the body and they do XYZ. Herbs are a little bit more systemic. They kind of work to bring the body into balance. And that's part of why herbal medicine takes a little bit longer to work sometimes than like pharmaceuticals do is because they're

trying to balance out what has gone awry in the body and bring it back to homeostasis. And if we have these deep emotional and psychological blockages, those can keep us from finding true healing. Yeah. And so, having a consultation service where I get to have a deeper and deeper relationship with my clients every time I see them helps them to remove those inner blockages to healing so that they find true healing and not just a temporary relief of their pain and suffering. And that's where we really get to what really ails you. And I love that phrase because every day in our lives we ask people, how

are you doing? Oh, I'm fine, how are you doing? It's just this common sentence in the US, but below the surface, people are suffering inside and we really got to dig down deep into that to help them find healing. Pete Yeah, most definitely. I mean, what seems to be, you know, a thing that is a wound in the mind tends to turn out to be carried somewhere in the body and manifested physically in the body. There seems to be a connection to those two. And it's kind of interesting the psychology behind it. 7 2

7 There's a very deep connection and I love traditional Chinese medicine for this one main reason is that they don't look at illness as a set of symptoms. And they even have, like they have in like traditional Chinese medicine, they list like the heart, the lungs, the liver, but it's not the same lungs that we think of in Western medicine. And it's not the same heart. For instance, the Chinese heart is the seat of our consciousness, or the word shen is what they use to describe the consciousness. And so, we know that the heart aches and ails, but the Chinese actually see that when we're aching and ailing, the heart can cause disease throughout the body and manifest in many different ways.

And so when you can look at these organs from a different perspective of an emotional manifestation in the body, as well as a physical manifestation, you can start to kind of follow those lines of where disease might happen. So somebody could have had a broken heart earlier in their life, and maybe that manifests as, for instance, arthrosclerosis or some other type of heart condition, but that can manifest in other places in the body. So for instance, the tongue is connected to the heart in Chinese medicine. So somebody could end up with, you know, a tumor on their tongue because they had a dis-ease in the heart that manifested somewhere else in the body, or the Chinese kidneys are connected to the ears.

So, a lot of times when people are having a dis-ease of the kidneys, which are different than the Western kidneys, so don't just think about the organ that's filtering the water in your body, it can manifest as hearing loss. And so, with traditional Chinese medicine and the herbs that they use, we have as herbalists different pathways for treating these manifestations of conditions that are caused by a disease and a different organ. And I think that's why it's really effective because one thing we don't really think about when we think about China is they're really advanced herbal medicine practices. And they actually have a lot of things available

to them that we don't have here in the US. For instance, in the US with cancer therapy, we just have our different, our conventional treatments. But in China, if you're diagnosed with cancer, you're put on an herbal protocol first and foremost before anything else is done. And then if you go to have chemotherapy or radiation, you're going to continue with an herbal protocol that is going to help to support that process. And this is really important. This is what we kind of spoke about earlier, is we need to have that blending of the two of them. And so that's where we need to go in the future. And I think that the people really want that because when you're going through

chemotherapy, you experience a lot of struggles to eat, to maintain your health, to keep on body weight. Even right down to some herbal protocols, it has been shown in clinical trials that people don't even lose their hair during chemotherapy because some of the herbs provide a protective factor to the body to help maintain its systems. So this is what I'm saying, like here in the US, we really need to go back into history and pull some of our history of our own herbal medicine traditions and bring that back into the present time. Because if you look historically, a thousand years back, if you were to be a

quote-unquote physician, you would have had to have a knowledge in several things. One, astrology, two, herbal medicine, and then three, you would have had to have your own medicinal garden. It was required before you went further on into your training as a physician. And this was important because they understood that you had to have this relationship with the medicine. You had to grow it and know and understand the plant in order to be able to use it with your clients. And so that's one of the things I talk a lot with different people, because I'm on a lot of podcasts where I talk just about herbal medicine and I get asked the question all the time What's one herb that I can grow in my garden or what are some things I can grow? and I always say pick the one that you have an affinity for and have one plant that you can grow a

relationship with and get to know and understand because there's this Symbiotic thing that starts to occur when you develop a deeper relationship with the plants. And it's actually been shown scientifically that the plants will produce more of certain chemicals to help the people that they're in close relationship with. So if I'm using a particular plant to treat, say, my kidney issues, the closer relationship I develop tending to that plant, the more of those plant constituents that plant is gonna produce for me.

Because plants have a consciousness. And here in the US, we really don't recognize them as these living conscious beings. But again, this is where science has really started to catch up with kind of those more esoteric spiritual concepts that people talk about. Science has proven that trees communicate to each other in the forest, and that trees will send nutrients to other trees. So for instance, a mother tree or a parent tree will send nutrients to a baby tree until

it is tall enough to pierce through the canopy and get sunlight of its own. They've also shown that trees will cut out particular trees from a community and keep them from getting nutrients from the soil for trees that they don't like or that trees that have been cut down and are stumps are still living and thriving because trees are sending them the nutrients that they need. So, when you take that into consideration, you start to realize that these are conscious living beings. Yeah, they're different than us, but there is a state of consciousness where they have community and family. And yeah, I'll let you talk.

Pete Yeah. I mean, this is really interesting. It makes sense. I mean, there's a survival aspect to nature and everything else. So as we go out, anything we've missed that we haven't talked about that we should get people aware of what you do and how you do it? Anna No, I think we talked about a lot of things. You can visit my website, Bonnie Dierkangelo, check in with everything else I'm doing from art to goldsmithing, you name it, I'm one of those eclectic kind of people that has

my hands on a little bit of everything. Pete The Avengers is a life, plus you got four kids, so that's definitely a handful. Are they all boys? Bonnie D'Arcangelo Three boys and one girl, and there's a wide age range. I have a 16-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 3- a three year old and a one year old. So, busy household. Pete Slauson Yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're doing the spectrum, but you know, sometimes when you have teenagers, you got to start over. Yeah.

Nicole Slauson You gotta remember that they once were cute. Pete Slauson They once were cute. I find that with my huskies. I'm like, you know, you were a cute puppy once, but peeing on the floor now is not funny anymore. Nicole Slauson Yeah, that's true. Pete Slauson That's probably something I did. So, thank you very much for coming on the floor now is not funny anymore. You're fine. Yeah, that's true. That's probably something I did. So thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. It's super insightful as well, Bonnie.

Thank you, Chris. It was a pleasure. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, on the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you next time. And that should have a sound, Bonnie. Great show.