Nutmeg: Tasty and... Toxic?

We've all heard that "the dose makes the poison." Nowhere is this a more apt saying than with nutmeg.  Hey, don't get us wrong, just a wee bit of nutmeg can help you tolerate some of those holiday food indulgences! Nutmeg is warming, has anti-parasite and pain-relieving properties, and can be used topically for pain relief.  Join us as we touch on some history and give you our takes on nutmeg: the spice, the medicine, the poison.  Oh, and go ahead and share this episode with someone who would enjoy it! Maybe a friend who's a chef or a baker?

Did you know that nutmeg was a commodity so precious it was traded for Manhattan? From serving as a sleep aid (insomniacs chickens?) to its pain-relieving effects, nutmeg has lots of potential as a medicinal spice. Just remember, while nutmeg may enhance your holiday season, moderation is key, and it's always advisable to consult a professional before using higher doses of nutmeg as medicine.

Books we mention: (If you purchase, we make a small commission at no cost to you.)
Jill Stansbury's Botanical Medicine for Herbalists (formulas and how to)
A Modern Herbal, the Maude Grieves Herbal Book (originally printed in ....

Recipes:
Medieval Cookies from Atlas Obscura
Golden Milk Recipe from our blog

MEDICINAL USE:
Anti-diarrheal and Sleep inducing effects
Reduction of colon cancer (in rats)
Traditional Users: A Modern Herbal by Maude Grieves - botanical.com (FREE!)
Ayurvedic perspective of nutmeg

TOXICITY:
Brain damage (in rats) from nutmeg
German Commission E Report on Nutmeg
Case reports of toxicity over 10 years (Illinois Poison Center)

Transcript

Leah: 0:00

Hey, tina, are you a fan of?

Tina: 0:01

Nutmeg, I can't say I'm a fan of it, as in I reach for it all that often. Do you like you don't do eggnog? No, I didn't even know what eggnog was until I don't know well into my 20s, and I don't think it was something we did.

Leah: 0:15

Oh my gosh, it was huge in the 70s. Yeah, it was like a big thing, like I mean, maybe it's a regional thing, I don't know, was it with alcohol?

Tina: 0:24

Was it spiked? Yeah, so my parents didn't really drink. I mean, it can be.

Leah: 0:29

It can be spiked, but I mean now they sell it in cartons. I don't drink it, I just the idea of it is kind of gross to me.

Tina: 0:38

We didn't drink much alcohol and when we did it was those really Fufu things when company came over like a brandy, alexander or a grasshopper or you know these kind of things that you put in a pretty glass.

Leah: 0:50

And my mom she was an officer's wife so she would throw parties and so that's what we probably had, like eggplant. We had eggplant punch, we had like eggnog punch or something I see. But I yeah the idea of it and I just the thought of. I wasn't a milk fan, so the idea of eggnog was just okay so what exactly is in eggnog?

Tina: 1:11

I mean, that's really dumb of me, but egg is just egg and what else I mean I?

Leah: 1:15

think cream, I don't know. Martha Stewart used to do this recipe where it was like every bottle of booze in the house and then like eggs and I don't know. Anyways, we're not talking about eggnog, but we are talking about nutmeg and I kind of think of the two together. I'm Dr Tina Kaser.

Tina: 1:33

And, as Lea likes to say, I'm the sciencey one and I'm Dr Lea Sherman and I'm the cancer insider and we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care, but we're not your doctors. This is for education, entertainment and informational purposes only. Do not apply any of this information with any other medical advice. Do this information without first speaking to your doctor. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own. Welcome to the Cancer.

Leah: 2:03

Pod, is it one of the times that you reach for nutmeg?

Tina: 2:13

So it's, yeah, it's usually sprinkled on top. So like you get a little cup of eggnog and then you sprinkle the nutmeg on top, ok, ok.

Leah: 2:25

It's a very Christmassy thing. Yeah, I mean, I can make it, I can make it, I can make it, I can make it, I can make it, I can make it, I can make it I can make it.

Tina: 2:31

I can make it. I can make it. Yeah, I mean I can, I can picture it.

Leah: 2:35

You take the seed, you do the little grating thing on top, yeah, or you get your little spice jar if you're, you know, if you're not that fancy to have the seed, but yes, and it's in that family of clove and cinnamon, like that kind of warm, toasty holiday season spices. So that's, that's our talk. Today is nutmeg, and neither of us really knew a lot. I should say. Now we're expert.

Tina: 3:03

We are like everyone else. I just went online and looked at a lot of resources and now I know everything there is to know about nutmeg.

Leah: 3:11

Well, I learned about it using it medicinally when I did my Ayurveda certification class. I wasn't familiar with it, so, yeah, that's kind of that's. That's my experience.

Tina: 3:24

OK, we both knew that if you take too much of it it could be abused, because it can be psychoactive and even fatal if you take a giant dose of it, right?

Leah: 3:35

And a giant dose is a lot less than I think what people think. So it's yeah. And that part I knew about. I knew that people were using nutmeg as a drug of abuse. I don't remember when that became like popular amongst the kids. You know how like they do cinnamon and tide pods or whatever the heck it is that you know the kids do. So yeah. So that's, that would be a big warning. It's not one of those things where if a little bit is good for you, a lot is more.

Tina: 4:02

A lot can kill you and how much a lot is might depend on how fresh it is and what its components are. Right. So, because some of the components that they think are that lead to that toxicity are some volatile components. So the fresher it is, the less you would need, and we're not talking I said, giant doses, but they're not that big. They're measured in teaspoons, they're not measured in, you know, buckets.

Leah: 4:27

Right, that's what I mean. A lot in nutmeg is really a little amount and, yeah, the fresher the more potent. So we were talking offline and I was like, well, most people have a jar of nutmeg that's probably been in their spice cabinet for many years because they use it once a year in holiday baking or on eggnog. So that might be something where you would use like two pinches or something. But yeah, I would recommend it to patients for certain things.

Tina: 4:56

but I would imagine, if you don't use it very often, it might be worth getting the actual nut, because then it protects those essential oils and when you go to use it it's still fresh, whereas if it's already been ground down. What grinding anything and powdering anything does and this is true of all plants the more you break it down, the more surface area there is. The more surface area where light or oxygen can get to it, the faster it goes bad. So that's true of cinnamon sticks. They'll stay more flavorful and have more essential oils preserved if you just use the stick and grind it up as needed. That's true of any spice. So in the grand scheme, I would imagine getting one nutmeg seed and having that over time. It would. It would keep for a very long time, much longer than the powder would, and it's a pretty seed, yeah. Yeah, should we talk about mace as well?

Leah: 5:49

Well, yeah, so, yeah. So nutmeg, it's a seed that's inside of a fruit that's on a tree. So the nutmeg is that seed itself, and then mace, which sometimes people use those interchangeably. That is the membrane that surrounds the seed.

Tina: 6:04

Mm-hmm, right the aryl part of the seed. So it's a seed coat sort of that. They take off of the nutmeg. So you know seeds and nuts growing trees as fruit. Just picture a chestnut if you've had chestnut trees, or pecans or walnuts, I mean they. They grow in this large fleshy fruit and inside is the seed or the nut. You know they grow on the tree looking kind of soft and usually green or yellow, and then they fall and degrade on the ground. So if you can get them as soon as they fall, then you can break them open and enjoy the nut inside, or the seed in this case.

Leah: 6:40

Yeah, when I was in Indiana you'd see like walnut fruits everywhere and the squirrels would go in and just like.

Tina: 6:45

Yeah, yeah, in Tulsa, oklahoma, the pecan trees were everywhere and people had this little round thing that they on the end of a stick and it had springy wires across it and they would just roll it, like people who golf do this with golf balls too. You just roll it and it pops inside your little ball roller and then you empty it into a bucket and you do it again. You keep filling it up. You can grab a lot of seeds or golf balls, depending what you're doing.

Leah: 7:11

Don't eat what's inside a golf ball. So I think there's more information out there on like the historical use of nutmeg than the modern use, because it's not really used a lot except for from what I've seen in Indian traditional Indian medicine, ayurveda or, yeah, it's used in.

Tina: 7:31

I mean, it's used in Ayurveda and it's used in Indian cooking, isn't it?

Leah: 7:34

It's in Garam Masala because I did look that up. But I mean it's used. I've seen nutmeg used in lasagna recipes. I mean it's used more as a cooking spice than as a medicinal spice.

Tina: 7:46

But you know what's interesting when we're always looking this up is that I mean, we all know the spice trade and the colonization of many of the islands in Polynesia for their spices and you know back in the day the 1500s, 1600s, when the Dutch trade was going on and there's really interesting stories online about the history of it. But I didn't realize that some of the value of those spices to the Europeans at that time, and why they were so, so valuable, was some of their medicinal effects which I did not realize. I guess part of my brain never made that connection. I mean, that sounds crazy because I know spices are medicine, but in a general sense, and I know about colonization at least from many moons ago, but I never put two and two together and thought, oh, they were actually using the spices as medicine, not just as cooking spices. Right, they were actually bringing medicine over and that's part of the reason they were so valuable.

Leah: 8:40

Yeah, because I always think of it, as you know, like something like cinnamon or you know other spices, that the value came in the fact that only the wealthy could afford it. That's where I thought the value came from Right.

Tina: 8:53

And then there's the whole story, which I don't know all the details of, but the whole idea of Dutch colonization, and I don't know how Manhattan was traded for an island in Indonesia, or something like that, With the British yeah, the British had the island and the Dutch had Manhattan and they traded it.

Tina: 9:12

Okay, so I'm looking at a website. I'm looking at it because this is kind of an interesting website called Atlas Obscura. Oh, I love that website. Dutch colonists committed genocide to secure a spice monopoly. But there's more to the story and the name of the article, if anyone wants to read. The whole thing is called the Hidden History of the Nutmeg Island. That was traded for Manhattan. Oh, let's link to it in our show notes. Yeah, but it's more than just a dash of flavor. It was done for their medicinal benefit.

Leah: 9:41

Medicinal purposes. Yeah, so historically nutmeg has been used for intestinal disorders. It was used in embalming by the Egyptians. The seeds have been used as an aphrodisiac antiflatulent. It can induce menses and because of that it's used as an abortifashion.

Tina: 10:04

Probably in large doses once again.

Leah: 10:06

But I mean that shows that I mean they were really using it a lot for medicine, right. I mean it had kind of a wide range of ailments that it covered.

Tina: 10:16

Oh yeah, I have some old herbal books and some new ones, but let's see the one I'm looking at right now. I took a picture of the page so I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is Jill Stansberry's book that came out not too long ago. She's an herbalist and naturopathic doc up in Washington and one of our teachers in school, and she has a series of books that are very good and if you're really into putting formulas together and understanding herbal medicine, I highly recommend her for volume series. Anyways, it says Maristica, which is the Latin name for nutmeg, stimulates appetite and has anti-emetic, which means it's anti-nausea and anti-vomiting, and carbonative effects. Carbonative is the herbal term for lowering your flatulence, so carbonative effects, so it's good to add to things like bean dishes, right? The use of nutmeg essential oil or freshly grated whole nuts may allay pain when topically applied, so it's good for a topical pain relief.

Leah: 11:16

Which makes sense, because it's kind of in that whole campfuri-ish.

Tina: 11:20

Yeah, yes, Campfer, eugenol, that whole.

Leah: 11:25

Nutmeg and clove seem very like those very warming.

Tina: 11:29

Yeah, the essential oil inside there, I think, is eugenol E-U-G-E-N-O-L that they have in common and it does have a lot of medicinal benefits. But anyways, they've used it for skin lesions, itching, parasites on the skin, ointments and poultices for pain anywhere hemorrhoidal pain so it seems like medicinally, the best way and safest way for anyone who wants to use nutmeg would be like you said use a pinch, use a small mount or use it topically for pain, and something that I found was that the German Commission E says it's an unapproved herb and then another organization suggested it's only used under the supervision of somebody who knows how to use it.

Leah: 12:13

So again, that's kind of like essential oils, right? We don't recommend people take essential oils internally, right?

Tina: 12:20

It's really the same reason. Yeah, because it's the essential oil that contains the toxic compounds, and so internal use of essential oils should be done under the guidance of people who know how to do that. But topical use, I think that's a fair game. So aromatherapy, so when we're doing essential oils and we're just breathing them in, I think that that's fair game for anyone to use, and I think poultices and ointments and, you know, like anything that has the plant topically applied, I don't think you can get yourself in too much trouble with essential oils.

Leah: 12:53

I would probably recommend I wouldn't apply it directly, I would have it mixed with something.

Tina: 12:59

Always, you mean essential oil, the essential oil.

Leah: 13:01

Yeah, Essential oil-wise, yeah, I would, just because I just would think it. To me it seems like it would be really kind of irritating. It's a use in small doses, but yeah, as aromatherapy again for like just having it in your room at holiday time. I mean it's one of the benefits is it helps to alleviate anxiety. It can help with depression. That was a while ago that I had read that Nutmeg can be helpful for depression. A lot of the studies were in rats. Like most of the studies that I found on Nutmeg in general were rat studies. Okay, yeah, but I think that if you had found an essential oil blend that had Nutmeg and other kind of seasonal fragrances, that would be really nice and kind of uplifting.

Tina: 13:46

I was entertained in reading I don't remember which website it said it, but I actually put it in my notes for this and it says an animal study published in the Journal of Ethno Pharmacology showed that taking an extract of Nutmeg helped significantly increase the duration of sleep in chickens.

Leah: 14:04

I love that. I love that so, and I don't I feel bad for the chickens if they have insomnia.

Tina: 14:10

Well, I was just going to say if your chickens aren't sleeping, well you know, throw it in and chickens do really well with spices too.

Leah: 14:17

I would put cayenne in my chicken's food, and stuff.

Tina: 14:21

just to help. I think it's awesome. Great visual in my head A little chicken's roosting.

Leah: 14:25

So the way that I was taught to use Nutmeg was you add a pinch or two at night to your warm milk it could be your warm oat milk or cow's milk or golden milk at night to kind of help relax you and help you sleep. I tried it because I learned about it and I was like, oh, I'll try it. It does help to induce sleep. Make sure that it's fresh. If it's not fresh, don't add a ton because you will have crazy dreams. Crazy dreams really vivid, wild dreams.

Tina: 15:01

And this is just from a pinch.

Leah: 15:02

No, that happened when I I had old Nutmeg and so I was recommended that I try no more than a quarter teaspoon. Okay, I did that once. I'm not doing that ever again. I mean, you can have vivid dreams if it's pretty fresh, but they get weird. Okay, the higher dose you go. So yeah, I, even if somebody does like a sleepy time tea, just do a little pinch in there.

Tina: 15:25

And you know to your point when you say golden milk which we will link to our recipe on golden milk, because we've talked about curcumin in a prior episode and golden milk is basically turmeric and a milk of some kind, whether it's real milk, like cow's milk, or it's a, you know, milk alternative. In any case, the important thing to think about there is that you're extracting something into fat rather than pure water. So when we make a sleepy time tea and we use a tea bag for that and there's no nutmeg in there, there's no curcumin. It's a commercial brand of a tea. If you're going to add nutmeg, you would want to add a little bit, just a dash even, of some kind of fat, whether that's a little bit of milk or milk alternative, because I think the fatty part is important to absorbing the components you want absorbed from a given plant.

Leah: 16:12

I never thought of that.

Tina: 16:14

Yeah, for me whenever I think about ingesting anything. I used to, even when people would pull out their Vitamixer and you're just juicing. Right, you're doing some kale and some mango, for example, or throwing some apples or whatever you have handy, you're putting it to your juicer and you're having a glass of that. Some kind of fat would be nice, because what you're doing is breaking open cell walls and inside there's all that colorful stuff, that, but it's inside the cell and it gets released. They're all fat soluble. So I often tell people to do something Take your fish oil at that time when you're doing your drink, or have it with some coconut oil or something.

Leah: 16:50

I think of that with greens. For sure to get the carotenoids, but yeah, I don't really accept for something like turmeric. I don't really think of adding the fat, so that's interesting.

Tina: 17:01

Yeah, I think it would be true of anything that has essential oils we want to get the benefits from, or any oils, really fixed oils. So I'm just going to say, in the nutmeg there's fixed oils and there are essential oils. And when we talk about essential oils in a plant, essential oils in a plant are the ones that we smell. That's what gives it its fragrance, that's what's coming off of that seed when you grate it and it smells so good. So, whether you're smelling cinnamon, you're smelling clove, you're smelling nutmeg, what you're smelling, what's going into the air and into your nose, are essential oils. They're so volatile they just get released at room temperature.

Tina: 17:36

There's also some fixed oils in those seeds and fixed oils are not being released. They're just stuck in there, right, they're not degrading at room temperature. They might degrade at 100 degrees or 120 degrees, or stick them in the oven. They'll degrade. But I just want to be clear about what an essential oil is and what it means to a spice, so that people can understand it. And those essential oils a lot of them, most of them, have medicinal properties and the best way to extract the medicinal property is either inhale it straight in or extract it with some kind of fat so we can absorb it, the more you know. I don't know much about nutmeg, but I know a lot about absorption.

Leah: 18:14

Well, speaking of absorption, I need to find the article because it's in my note but I didn't link to the article. There was research where because this is the cancer pods, we're going to talk about cancer in mice with colon cancer nutmeg helped to modulate bacteria favorably.

Tina: 18:35

So I was going to say in a good way, right, okay?

Leah: 18:38

Yeah, and I think that's really interesting because there are a lot of different herbs and spices that modulate. I mean, they all pretty much have some effect on bacteria. So I thought that was kind of a because I tried to find the cancer relationship to what we're talking about. So that was the one that I found, yeah.

Tina: 18:58

Well, and it's just in a very loose way, we can also say that maybe that has something to do not just nutmeg, but spices in general. Maybe that has something to do with why there is a lot lot less colorectal cancer in India in general than there is in Westernized countries.

Leah: 19:19

Because of the use of the spices, nutmeg specifically.

Tina: 19:22

Right, right. What I'm thinking is it's a combination of a lot of the essential oils found in various spices and there's a much higher consumption there of various spices, whether it is garam masala, curry, whatever. I mean. There's way more than we're exposed to here in the United States, because if you ever seen someone cook who's native to India, it's like a symphony of spices. Like how did you just put 30 spices in one dish at an unerstand? And it tastes delicious.

Leah: 19:49

So all of these have antimicrobial properties and so it's probably that, and they're anti-inflammatory and so that's probably a lot of what is playing into this. But I just thought that was interesting. I will put a link to the abstract at least if people want to look further into that. So but yeah, I didn't really find a lot, if anything, on human studies other than the fact that it can be very dangerous and to use it in extreme moderation. What was interesting was the homeopathic of nutmeg.

Leah: 20:22

If you look at the indications and with homeopathy the indications for taking something are typically the side effect you would get from ingesting too much of right. Is that the good way to explain it? So like if people apply Arnica or use the pellets for Arnica for bruising bruise like pain. That is because it was observed a long time ago that if you ingest Arnica you will experience bruise like pain. So yeah, so the Nux Machada, which is the or I don't even know how you say it because I don't do homeopathy but looking up the homeopathic indications, it's things like delirium hallucinations. So that was kind of interesting, yeah.

Tina: 21:05

Sorry, I have a corgi in the background. It's interesting that you mentioned bruising, because in one of the older herbal textbooks I came across some of the oils or the essential oil components, that Eugenol that I mentioned, having platelet aggregate prevention, so keeping your platelets from sticking together. And what's interesting, when you talk about an anti-cancer effect, a lot of things in nature that stop blood clotting also have anti-cancer effects, just in a general sense, for example, red clover or, in this case, nutmeg. There is something in common with platelet aggregation and cancer formation, and now it could be just that it has to do with aggregation of cancer cells, because when cells stick together, there are certain mechanisms that are used Regardless. There just seems to be an association between natural agents known to stop platelets from aggregating, which is a blood clot.

Tina: 21:58

When platelets aggregate, that's what causes the blood clot. So then I start thinking well, if that's the case, maybe we should sprinkle a little bit of this on those hot teas that we're having when we have COVID, because people who have COVID have an increased risk of blood clots just in general, and they have that risk for like a couple months at least, if not three months, after the infection. Yeah, interesting, yeah, yeah, just another thing to consider. I often for these when we don't have studies. I look at the old herbal textbooks and just see what they used to use it for as consistently, and there's a good reason probably that they used it over and over again because it worked.

Leah: 22:35

So was there anything else that you learned about nutmeg? That, before we go into precautions, which we've also touched on already and emphasized, I think I'm good. Okay, so a few more precautions. Or in terms of toxicity, because it can be pretty toxic. It can in mice. Long-term use of high-dose nutmeg was shown to have cellular degenerative changes in the brains of rats. I don't know if you saw that.

Tina: 23:04

I did not see that, but I guess I'm not too surprised because if it can be a drug of abuse, it seems if you did that chronically you're going to lead to damage. I think that's true of most things that are psychoactive out there.

Leah: 23:19

And then some of the other toxicity warnings where it can cause temporary constipation, difficulty in urination and increased fat deposition in the liver. Another thing was electrolyte imbalance Interesting, and these are all large quantities, and then, of course, the delirium, convulsions and hallucinations and death. This is intense.

Tina: 23:48

Yeah, the constipation makes sense because I know one of the old herbalist books that I was looking at actually referred to herbals before them and said such and such herbalists who were lesser known herbalists actually specifically said in their experience cancer-induced diarrhea. I don't know what that meant back in the day. We're talking about probably going back to at least the 1800s, if not the 1700s, for that indication. When you say constipation, it probably does work for some diaries. If you take too much of it and it constipates, then maybe just the right amount can counter some diarrheal effects from whatever the causes.

Leah: 24:21

Well, because cinnamon has those kind of properties that can help with diarrhea. So I kind of think of it as they're all family Family in terms of the properties of it.

Tina: 24:33

So, and in the grand scheme, just to button up the mace thing, that we introduced mace at the beginning but we didn't really talk about it it is the seed coat basically of the nutmeg and, according to a modern herbal which is an old herbal compendium, the entire thing has been indexed online botanicalcom.

Tina: 24:51

This is the actual book. Online you can look at nutmeg. In any case, Basically mace does the things that nutmeg does, but only in a more gentle fashion, so mace is kind of nutmeg light Interesting. Well, that's cool. So might be the safest way to get some of these medicinal actions out of the plant. Same plant.

Leah: 25:11

But I still wouldn't recommend anybody use mace medicinally without the supervision of someone who knows what the heck they're doing.

Tina: 25:20

Yeah, and you and I talked about the fact that a lot of the companies that we do business with I'm thinking Wise Woman Herbal, Gaia Herbs they often don't put this in a capsule or any concentrated form, so they don't even put a product on the market that allows people to hurt themselves Because I did find a product on Amazon that was a 1,000 milligram capsules of nutmeg and I didn't recognize the company name.

Leah: 25:45

I mean, I would not order that off of Amazon ever.

Tina: 25:50

And 1,000 milligrams is roughly a third of a teaspoon, right, if you were going to measure it.

Leah: 25:55

I don't know my conversions, but I don't know what's in there. I don't know the quality of it. I'm not familiar with the company, the product that I know that I have used with patients and myself. There is a sleep product by Banyan Botanicals. Banyan Botanicals is a company that makes formulas for those who practice Ayurvedic medicine, and so their sleep formula does have nutmeg in it and it's the last ingredient. So there are all of these herbs and spices in there and nutmeg is the very last one listed, and probably I just tell patients to do the pinch or two on whatever it is they're drinking at bedtime.

Tina: 26:34

Yes, and because Banyan does Ayurvedic medicine specifically, they are comfortable with the use of it in their formula at the right dose. Right, because I noticed a lot of sleep formulas. I was actually looking at formula after formula online and most of the Western herbal companies do not use it, even though it's pretty reliable, I think, for relaxation and insomnia.

Leah: 26:55

It may be in some sleep tea formulas, not necessarily like sleepy time, celestial seasonings, but in more like the exotic kind of sleep formulas. I think I may have seen it in there.

Tina: 27:08

My guess is that it's probably online somewhere where you find the word biohack, because that's like trendy right now, like biohacking and all that stuff, right? No, I know what you're saying. Like Neutropics, yeah, and I think that the biohackers kind of proceed without caution is my point a lot of the times, right, and so you know we are voices of reason and caution, but that's because we're 50-something years old and we've seen a lot of s**t go down that shouldn't have gone down.

Leah: 27:37

Oh, that's going to get quacked. So we're going to put a bunch of links to the stuff that we talked about. I have a link to an NPR story that links to an article from the Atlantic of someone who took too much nutmeg and that's kind of an interesting read. But yeah, so be responsible, Do not really don't do anything that we say unless you talk to your doctor first. I'm really putting cautions out here with this, because this is probably one of the most potentially volatile things that we are, you know, dangerous, potentially dangerous things that we've talked about.

Leah: 28:14

But I do love it as a recommendation to help with sleep, and this is kind of the time of year that nutmeg is out there, so enjoy it.

Tina: 28:23

Add it to your baking. Yeah, enjoy it within reason. Yeah, I'm sure there's some cookie recipe out there.

Leah: 28:28

I always I give my dog a cookie at bedtime, so she has bedtime cookies, and maybe there's a formula out there that's for bedtime cookies that has cinnamon and nutmeg.

Tina: 28:39

Do you really give your dog bedtime cookies? Yeah, it's a treat. Okay.

Leah: 28:44

I say bedtime cookie and she goes into her kennel. It's not like a real cookie, it's not like a chocolate chip. Anyways, we have gone on so long about something that we know so little, very small amounts about. Yeah, so little. I feel like it's one of those things like where you write an essay for school about a book that you didn't read and you just like put a lot of words in there.

Tina: 29:10

That's funny. I don't know if I ever did that.

Leah: 29:13

Oh, hello because you're a writer. Anyways, remember to follow and subscribe, because that way, when a new episode drops, we'll be right there in your feed.

Tina: 29:23

That's right Easy to find us that way. Feel free to reach out to us. If there's something you want us to talk about, let us know. We reach out to our email. It's all in our episode notes there. You can reach us everywhere. We're at the Cancer Pod, depending where you're looking for us.

Tina: 29:39

And then on our website you can easily just click a tab and if you want to ask us a question, yeah, if you want to use your best possible radio voice and click on the microphone, we'll put you on the air. On that note, I'm Dr Leah Sherman and I'm Dr Tina Gaiser, and this is the Cancer Pod. Until next time.

Leah: 29:58

Thanks for listening to the Cancer Pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and, as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The Cancer Pod is hosted by me, dr Leah Sherman, and by Dr Tina Gaiser. Music is by Kevin MacLeod. See you next time.

Tina: 30:40

You've got this, Dr Sharon sand.