CBD still feels a bit taboo in some circles. Even as CBD has become more mainstream, a lot of people still immediately associate it with weed. But today, we're joined by Scott Schwab, co-founder and co-CEO of Mett Naturals, the very first CBD company that I'm ready to stand behind.
I've had plenty of CBD companies who want to work with me in my inbox the past year, but most of them are all pretty much doing the same thing. They aren’t growing their plants in good soil quality soil, even the organic companies are using some form of pesticides, they aren’t hanging their hemp out to dry to keep it from molding and they are using solvents to extract the CBD.
While CBD has some amazing qualities, if it’s a poor quality plant, grown in poor quality soil and it’s contaminated with pesticides, mold and solvents… then it can potentially do you more harm than good.
That's why I was so excited to find Mett Naturals. They're disrupting things in the CBD industry and you all know I love a company that's willing to go against the grain!
CBD has transformative effects on health and agriculture and Scott learned this after battling a health condition himself. The only respite from his pain? CBD. He quickly became obsessed with the power of CBD for neuropathy pain management.
Together, we navigate through the often misunderstood distinctions between CBD and THC, along with the groundbreaking research that suggests CBD's potential in supporting the immune system against respiratory viruses. We explore how CBD interacts with the body's receptors, potentially alleviating stress, improving sleep, and managing pain.
If you've ever tried CBD and thought "this isn't doing anything for me," listen to this episode. And if you've been too afraid to try - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the science of CBD. High-quality, plant-based products like hemp have life-altering potential.
By the end of our chat with Scott, you'll come away with a richer understanding of how regenerative farming methods not only enhance the quality of CBD but also contribute to a more sustainable planet. A healthier you and a greener earth might just begin with that next bottle of CBD oil—provided it's the real deal.
Get *10% off Mett Naturals CBD with code WENDY
*this code isn't just for your first order, you can use it on all orders.
Read shownotes here
head on over to www.detoxyourpits.com and use discount code WENDYKATHRYN at checkout for 10% off!
If you enjoyed this weeks' episode, please:
CBD still feels a bit taboo in some circles. Even as CBD has become more mainstream, a lot of people still immediately associate it with weed. But today, we're joined by Scott Schwab, co-founder and co-CEO of Mett Naturals, the very first CBD company that I'm ready to stand behind.
I've had plenty of CBD companies who want to work with me in my inbox the past year, but most of them are all pretty much doing the same thing. They aren’t growing their plants in good soil quality soil, even the organic companies are using some form of pesticides, they aren’t hanging their hemp out to dry to keep it from molding and they are using solvents to extract the CBD.
While CBD has some amazing qualities, if it’s a poor quality plant, grown in poor quality soil and it’s contaminated with pesticides, mold and solvents… then it can potentially do you more harm than good.
That's why I was so excited to find Mett Naturals. They're disrupting things in the CBD industry and you all know I love a company that's willing to go against the grain!
CBD has transformative effects on health and agriculture and Scott learned this after battling a health condition himself. The only respite from his pain? CBD. He quickly became obsessed with the power of CBD for neuropathy pain management.
Together, we navigate through the often misunderstood distinctions between CBD and THC, along with the groundbreaking research that suggests CBD's potential in supporting the immune system against respiratory viruses. We explore how CBD interacts with the body's receptors, potentially alleviating stress, improving sleep, and managing pain.
If you've ever tried CBD and thought "this isn't doing anything for me," listen to this episode. And if you've been too afraid to try - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the science of CBD. High-quality, plant-based products like hemp have life-altering potential.
By the end of our chat with Scott, you'll come away with a richer understanding of how regenerative farming methods not only enhance the quality of CBD but also contribute to a more sustainable planet. A healthier you and a greener earth might just begin with that next bottle of CBD oil—provided it's the real deal.
Get *10% off Mett Naturals CBD with code WENDY
*this code isn't just for your first order, you can use it on all orders.
Read shownotes here
head on over to www.detoxyourpits.com and use discount code WENDYKATHRYN at checkout for 10% off!
If you enjoyed this weeks' episode, please:
Have you ever wondered about CBD and whether or not it could actually help you with things like sleep, stress or even pain? Maybe you've wanted to try it, but you are always concerned with what else was in it. Would it make you high? Is there a THC in it? What about quality? How do you know what good quality CBD is compared to bad quality CBD, and whether you've tried CBD before, use it regularly or you're just CBD curious?
Speaker 1:Today's episode is going to be the CBD conversation you don't want to miss. You're listening to the Detox Still in the podcast, where clean living meets real life. My name is Wendy and I'm an environmental toxins attorney turned clean living coach, and since 2015, I've helped over 800 families clean up the toxins in their home. My mission is simple to show you how to create a toxin free-ish home that you actually love and also fits into your real, crazy, busy life. Oftentimes, that means bringing on business owners that are disrupting an industry for the better.
Speaker 1:Today, that guest is Scott Schwab, co-founder and co-CEO of Met Naturals, a fully regeneratively grown, high quality CBD company, and Scott is spilling the tea on all the things you want to know about the CBD industry, from how it's grown, why the soil it's grown in matters so much when it comes to quality and whether or not it actually works what you need to watch out for when you're buying CBD. So you're not buying fake CBD, because that is a thing what CBD can do for your overall health and we even talked about some amazing scientific research showing how CBD can help your immune system fight off respiratory viruses. If you're ready to learn about all things CBD, let's dive in. Scott, welcome to the Detox Dilemma podcast. I'm really excited to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, wendy, I appreciate you. Let me come on.
Speaker 1:So you are co-owner of a company called Met Naturals, which is a CBD company, and I'm really excited to finally find a CBD company that I'm willing to talk about. That I want to talk about For those people that are in the audience listening. I want to start from the very beginning, like basics. What is CBD, literally? What are the letters stand for? What is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much. So CBD can show up in a couple of different types of cannabis plans. All of us understand that marijuana has a specific type of growth. Well, hemp does as well, and unmistakably, a lot of people have thought about CBD from the perspective of what it is, what it's not, and I'm so grateful that you're allowing me to talk about it. Cbd stands for cannabinole, and so a cannabinole is a compound or a chemical from the plant that naturally grows within the hemp plant. It's also in the marijuana plant. That's why I brought up those two plans. Genetically, though, these two plants have been completely different for 2,000 years, and so when we're talking about what CBD is, it's a compound found in medicinal plants that help in a variety of different ways.
Speaker 1:I love that. So in all my years researching companies, brands, I've always, when I come across a company that is super disruptive, which means you're doing something completely different than what the rest of the industry is doing I always find there's a powerful personal story. In every case, the owner has a reason why they're doing things that way. I would love to hear your background, your story and what brought you to CBD to begin with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. Let me share this. When I was 15 years old, I was paralyzed, and that paralysis came from something called Guillambarre, and Guillambarre is an ascending paralysis that attacks the nervous system, but specifically it damages the myelin sheath, and when you don't have myelin sheath, which is your protective coating around your nerves, your nerves start to die. And so where I found myself at 15 years old was this weird kind of spaghetti-like feeling in my hands and my legs. I went to the hospital. They were trying to identify what it was. Night after night, it just kept getting worse and worse, and it was a scary time. I'll be honest with you. Looking back, it's what helped me to grow and become who I am. Anyways, that experience really opened my eyes from a perspective of like life is pretty precious. Their health is really very precious because I left the hospital in leg braces and a wheelchair and I couldn't walk, I couldn't button up my pants, I couldn't button my shirt. There are so many things that, from a healthy 15-year-old boy who's playing football to coming out of the hospital and being in a wheelchair, it was very different. And so that happened during my like 15 to 16-year-old age, and I was in my leg braces for a year. But what I found is that my nerves were able to grow back, and that was through work with my neurologist, work with my dad, who is a physical therapist. So that's one of those little moments where he and I have become very, very close and have been since those years. But it taught me that I was in charge of my health. And so, coming out of that scenario, I looked and I thought, okay, I never want to be in this scenario, I can't move, I can't be active.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to just about three, four years ago, I was getting so much intense pain that I didn't understand where it was coming from. So I started looking into it and it was neuropathy. And in talking to doctors, neurologists, what it is is my lung sheath and my nervous system has so much trauma that now, as an adult, they've just kind of had their way with my health. So I can't just have a normal scenario with nerves that work and they're managed like a healthy 42-year-old man. They're damaged and there's some trauma there, and so for me it was something to where I said, okay, I've got to start looking for some pain management.
Speaker 2:And a lot of pain management that was suggested was kind of a synthetic pathway pills, nsaids because the pain was the thing that I was trying to manage first, right. But I also wanted function and I wanted to be active. And so when I started looking into CBD, my first response was like no way, I'm like I've never smoked weed. This isn't me, this isn't my pathway. But as I looked more and more into the therapeutic benefits and specifically how it attaches to receptors and treats the receptors from a pain perspective, I became very, very bought in and started using a variety of brands but found they were so inconsistent Some worked, some did not, even within the same brand. There was just so much variety. I was like I have got to change this. And so that's the moment when I called up my buddy and I said, hey, what are you thinking about CBD? And he's like, well, kind of like how I thought, and I was like, well, let's research it, let's really dig in. So that's really where it came from.
Speaker 1:I love it and I feel like when people own companies and they're as passionate as you are, that's where we get the best quality, the best standards, because you're so in it, it's so personal to you and I love that. So that's a perfect segue into an issue that I have always had with not just the CBD industry but the lack of regulation around supplements. I'm not somebody who would typically tell people to go take a supplement. I'm not a big supplement taker myself in general, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I believe in a healthy lifestyle and whole foods and getting nutrients and vitamins and all of that from foods. But we do have this culture in America where there are shelves and aisles everywhere of supplements. I mean, we're being sold supplements everywhere, and I just want to read two really quick things.
Speaker 1:There were an investigation that was done actually multiple that were done. One of them was on herbs herbal supplements that were being sold in places like Walgreens, cvs, and this actually was. The New York Attorney General Investigated a variety of herbal supplements being sold in all those places, including GNC, which I missed, and what they found was only 21% of all of the supplements and the herbal supplements tested actually had in them what they claimed to be. So 79% of what they tested was completely fake. And then, as far as Amazon goes, there was another investigation that was done. They took a look at immune boosting wellness the most popular ones that were being sold on Amazon and found that less than half actually contained what was on the product label. So is that very similar to what happens in the CBD industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think, in some ways, probably even more heightened because CBD in 2018, the Farm Bill passes and everybody rushes into it. Everybody had a brand or everybody had a manufacturer and it was this like gold rush, and what we found is that the quality immediately. Why we chose to do a seed to shelf type of an approach is because we would go and visit farms and these farms were stacking all of their hemp in bundles or just kind of like in a pile, and I'm like what are you doing? The hemp plant comes out of the ground at 14% moisture. That's mold. That's just like a mold issue waiting to happen. And so we're like, okay, got to make sure that the farming is done right.
Speaker 2:Then we went and visited manufacturers and extractors and I'm telling you, wendy, it was the most disgusting thing that I have ever seen. I would not be surprised if they had rat issues, if they had all of these things, because it was so disgusting and so dirty. And so that was the other aha moment that we had is we've got to own all of it. We've got to have this be a transparent process. We've got to be able to open it up to our general public who wants to come and they want to be educated, either from the extractor, from the manufacturer or from us, the farmer, and what we've done is we've tried to open that up and tell that story.
Speaker 2:But, similar to what you were talking about the state of Utah, they do a yearly inspection of our facilities and the last time we had somebody by, they said we have removed 1400 products off of the registry just this year alone, and we'll probably continue to remove more of those because Utah has really stepped up their testing to the point where you have to have independent and third party tests. They have to agree with each other, but they're from different locations or different labs, and so I applaud what Utah is doing, but it needs to really be done federally because there's too many brands, like you said, that 80% of them are bad players.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's really sad to me, a lot of my customers, a lot of my audience. They'll come to me oh I bought this brand, what do you think? Or I bought that brand, what do you think? And most of the time I don't know. I look at these websites, I call them, I email them. I never hear anything. I don't know where it's being grown, I don't know how it's being grown, I don't know what the soil composition is like. I don't know anything about the way they extract it. Do they use chemicals and solvents? I literally know nothing about it and so I can't give advice and say, oh yeah, that sounds like a great brand just because they have a great website and really great marketing. And I love and you said seed to shelf, which I love. I love the wind.
Speaker 1:Companies have complete and total control from the genetics of the seed. You guys propagate your own seeds and we'll talk about that a little bit later. But the way that you farm it, the way that you harvest it, like you said, you dry it out where it's open so it's not going to grow mold. Mold is a huge issue for a lot of people and they're taking CBD because they're trying to make their health better and not realizing that what they're taking could be completely fake, could have very little CBD in it anyway, and it could have mold and it could have solvents and it could be making their issue worse. And so CBD is amazing. I have read all the research. You sent me some amazing research we're going to talk about. It's great, but it's just so hard to trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's talk about before we dive into some other things I'm passionate about, which is the regenerative agriculture piece. I think a lot of people know what CBD is, but they don't exactly know what they could use it for. Like you said, pain. I think most people understand that CBD can be very helpful for pain, but what are the most common things that people would use CBD for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, and that's one of the things that, early on, people were asking. Well, what does it do and how is it utilized? And there's something about the plant that all of us should know right out of the gate. Most people identify hemp or even forms of other cannabis as either one compound or the other, so CBD or THC, and ultimately that plant, or those plants, that plant family, grows up to 113 different compounds. And so people sometimes are like, okay, well, I don't really have any issues with sleep, or I don't have any issues with my stress or my anxiety. Why would I take it? Well, it works with your receptors.
Speaker 2:We have an endocannabinoid system present within our body and sometimes when I say that people are like that's false, like that sounds like it's made up, I'm like serious. Go look up ECS or endocannabinoid system and you will find that this system is centrally located to our body. So when I talk about centrally located, we're talking about a CB1 receptor, cb2 receptor, beta GABA, we're talking about a respiratory system. We're talking about every function in the body comes back to what our ECS or endocannabinoid system has in storage. If we're depleted, don't plan on function. That happens at the cellular level. So what does that mean? Stress, anxiety. It can mean sleep or circadian rhythms, it can mean our pain or a regulation of pain, and there's all of these things that are there according to the systems that we already know about, but the endocannabinoid system is central to your wellness, or what we call holistic balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a big thing. Right now, People are talking about managing their nervous system, regulation their cortisol levels. We Americans by nature our schedule and the way we live is busy and stressful and packed, and so I do think there's this huge conversation happening in the wellness space that helping to manage and regulate your nervous system so that you're living less stressed from hour to hour in your day, and helping yourself manage that is a big thing, and I know a lot of people in my life that use CBD for that and they've had phenomenal results just in bringing down their nervous system. Even just a little bit can make a huge difference to everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're totally right, and I mean, the one thing that I tell people is number one, and what we've tested the most is inflammation, and inflammation is such a harmful thing to the body in any way, shape or form. Yes, there's aspects of inflammation, which is nutrient delivery to a muscle or a sprain or something where there's an injury, but most inflammation is not a good thing. And so when I tell people to think about CBD, think inflammation decrease, whether it's at the gut level, whether it's on a topical level, like you hurt your knee or your back. That is where CBD is a superstar. And then we think about other compounds like CBN, cbc, cbt and all those other 113 players. It needs a lot more research, which is what we're excited about, but it also and you said it very well it's a very good treatment for the neurological system within our bodies.
Speaker 1:So you have done some. There's some awesome research you shared with me on cytokine inflammation and I think most people when they think or maybe they don't even know what that word means at all, but in general, when I think of it when we first talked about it, I think about when somebody gets sick and then we have this like swarm of like a cytokine I don't even know if I'm saying that word correctly you know comes in and it's kind of this body's immune response, like an overactive immune response. I remember during COVID you heard a lot about this on the news because they would say a part of what they were thinking people were getting so sick is because it was this huge storm of cytokine. You know cytokine or whatever it is and it's confusing to people, but I think you explain it really well. Can you explain that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, ultimately it's a system or the development of a system within your body and it's a self-division process or cytokinesis. And so when we're thinking about cytoplasmic communication, this division of the cytokines or the growth of the cytokines, really ultimately goes down to what your body is able to function and what it's communicating. So cytokines are these little messengers and they're a protein-based. And when we're sending messages of like from a respiratory perspective, like we have a sickness coming on, well it's the cytokine. Or, like you talked about with the previous COVID, a lot of people were struggling from cytokine storm, which was those proteins. They become inflamed and they become unable to function at a cellular level, and so people were going on breathing machines, people were having a challenge with just processing normal breath or ability to get out of bed, and so really, the cytokines are core to your cellular health and it starts at your respiratory system. Cytokinesis is just the division of those cells and the multiplying of those cells, whether they be healthy cells or they be unhealthy cells. Inflammation is a huge part of that.
Speaker 1:And CBD helps with that.
Speaker 2:It does. It's funny because there was a ground-baking research that came out through. It was Oregon State University, but they said CBGA and CBDA, which is the acidic value of both of those CBG and CBD. They are effective at blocking the protein spike that attaches to our cells. I read that and that was so amazing because it was like, okay, for the first time university is looking at what's happening in the respiratory system and giving us a pathway of how we can avoid the common cold flu issues that all start in bronchial issues, but it's all inflammatory base and so if we're consistently taking CBD and I would recommend CBG then we have this immunity, true immunity, which a lot of times companies will say well, it has elderberry in it. Great, elderberry is phenomenal, but let's get CBD into a body's system to be able to cut back and even eliminate that inflammation in the chest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually read that study and it's phenomenal, and I wish stuff like this got out into the masses more. So I'm very happy you're here. Hopefully, at least my listeners will learn a lot. So I think another thing that confuses people is people think CBD has THC. Right, they're going to get high from it. See that CBD still has the stigma, I think, around it where people think, oh well, it still has marijuana in it just because it's legal. So what is the difference between CBD and THC? Is it the same plant? Is it a different plant, and can you get high from CBD?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. You cannot get high from CBD. But in thinking of the example we gave, where there's 113 compounds, right, there is enough plant material there to be able to give you all of your nutrients, and that's the amazing thing about the hemp plant. It's also the amazing thing about the marijuana plant. Both plants have a lot of function or capability. Now let me divide it up this way Think of in terms of a basketball team, right, you have five players on the court and one of those players is going to be CBD. One of those players is going to be THC. They play well as a team.
Speaker 2:For example, cbd is the compound that brings a person down off of their high, so that yin to yang is. Thc is psychoactive. It is going to, at a specific level, get you high, and so our products and under the Farm Bill will never get you to that point where you're feeling high, right. However, what we've learned is sensitivity of specific compounds for people are a little bit more pronounced, and so there are feelings that people have at times like I feel like I'm high and I'm like, okay, I understand what you're saying, but from a level of how much CBD versus THC is in the product. We have so much CBD in our products that the THC levels are very low, so your capability of getting high wrong products right. But there are products that have very high levels of THC and lower levels of CBD and it can bring you down.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing is the weed or the marijuana that existed in the 60s and the 70s. They're estimating that it's 200 times as strong as it was in the 60s and 70s when supposedly everybody was taking it for that high. Well, ultimately there are some medicinal benefits and we know this from appetite restoration for anybody who's going through cancer. It's also very good at blocking pain receptors, so that CB1 responds very well to THC. So in our opinion, in our research, it is utilized very well with certain scenarios or certain we'll call symptoms or even root causes.
Speaker 1:So those are two different plants and genetics, though. Right. So something that is the CBD oil, like the stuff you guys have, comes from the hemp plant, and then what would have that THC, that high THC, and it comes from a marijuana plant? Are they like cousins? Yeah, they're genetic. Yeah, they're genetically like cousins.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, great way to say it. And ultimately, wendy, both plants have THC in it. When we grow our hemp plants, we have to test it on a pretty frequent basis, especially that last little bit where we test it and when the THC level is approaching that 0.03, we're taking it out of the field because we don't want it to get what would be called hot or become THC specific, where the compound or the mix of it is higher than the legal limit. So we're taking everything out of the field far before that, whereas, like what you talked about with marijuana, it's grown for the specific purpose of having high levels of THC and CBD is still there as a family member or part of the team. But ultimately it's not a CBD plant and a THC plant. It's a cannabis plant. And then you've got a hemp plant that has all these nutrients and then marijuana that is more bred for the psychoactive.
Speaker 1:The higher THC. Yeah, so from a genetic perspective of seeds, you guys then keep and propagate seeds that produce plants that provide a high level of CBD and keep that THC under that 0.03%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct, and thank you for asking that, because a lot of times people don't dive into the seed. But when we initially started, we bought an OG or an original Bubba Cush and we felt like Bubba Cush was the best representation, in our opinion, of the CBD profile. You're going to have your CBD, cbn, cbc, you're going to have CBG in there, and then, as we started studying it, we were really interested in CBG, again from an immunity perspective. So we sourced a plant or a seed called Eva's Gift, and those are the two that we've utilized, and done so in such a way where we propagate our own seeds, like you talked about. If we let these plants seed out, we can propagate those plants and then we can sex them and then feminize them to make them a plant that we can utilize in the field.
Speaker 1:I love that. This is why it's so important to buy from a company and there's so few and far between that has control over that. I mean most companies. They have no control over what the seeds are doing or what the plant's doing. They're just buying from brokers. They're buying from somebody. Having the control down to that. Minutia is so important when you're talking about quality control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're totally right, and most don't do it, but that's one of the things we feel like is special about Metnatural's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. So what do you think about how people can utilize CBD? Do you think CBD is something that? Obviously? I know you're a big supporter of regular uses of CBD, but for my listeners who might be wondering how they can work it into maybe their daily life or reasons why they would use it, is it something that has to be taken consistently over time to really get the benefits? Or is it something that somebody could say, like if I have a headache, can I go take a dropper of CBD instead of reaching for, say, tylenol or some kind of other TC medication that I might not necessarily want, because Tylenol reduces your ability to actually? You know anyway all these reasons why Tylenol is terrible. That'll be an episode for another day. But can you use CBD as a one-off like oh, I have some insomnia, and rather than reaching for melatonin, can I reach for CBD? What are the ways that people can utilize it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, and there's a multiplicity of ways, but I'll use the examples that you gave. Right, you absolutely can replace all of your NSAIDs and many of your just synthetic type of medicines. Right, because there are going to be benefits to a synthetic medicine because it's been studied. But if you go back far enough, generally you'll find where it started as a plant and where people were utilizing it from its plant form to be able to get those same results.
Speaker 2:The challenge is the consistency, right, Because sometimes people are like, well, how much do I take and how much should I be utilizing? And so the great thing about CBD is it is really a great thing for the whole body to feel. If you look from a feels perspective or what it is that a person can expect. If, in the event that we can get it into your body and your endocannabinoid system is healthy and full, what you're going to notice is less stress. You're going to notice less pain, less inflammation and even your circadian rhythm will get back on track and you'll start having great sleep. Cbd isn't necessarily the compound for sleep. Our studies, our research and even the research that's been pretty popular is CBN is really the compound that's most associated with depth of sleep and REM sleep, and so, when you have a product right.
Speaker 2:So when you have these products that are taken specifically for certain things, I would never take melatonin only because your brain naturally produces it and if, in the event that you're not, if you're subbing it with something else, your brain will think well, I don't need to create as much. And ultimately it's kind of like that process that when you wake up and start seeing light, your clock initially begins for the day right, and then when it gets dark, your body really starts kind of going back into that mode like I'm getting ready for sleep. So to force it in there with more melatonin not a great idea. And then some of the other products Ambien, there's different things that are like for the purpose of sleep and again, I'm a big proponent of sleep because you've got to have it to regenerate your mind and your body.
Speaker 2:But I would tell you absolutely you can replace any of the sleep aids that you have with a good CBD CBN. Now, cbd is going to put you in a relaxed state. Cbn is going to take you the rest of the way and give you that depth of sleep. To the question you had about headaches, we find that topical use is very effective, but tincture is great too, our most successful product for migraines and headaches is our little roll on and you just put it over across your temples, from temple to temple, go down your neck and within 20 to 30 minutes, you're going to find that you have headache. Really, and it's crazy. There's frankincense in there and we're blending some of these herbs that are going to allow your body to really be at rest or be at homeostasis.
Speaker 1:I love that. It is interesting. My audience is used to me talking about essential oils, and so when you talk about hundreds of constituents being a part of this plant, it's a lot like the way essential oils are. You've got like 50 to 75, some of them maybe up to 100 different constituents in this plant, and some plants have higher percentages of them than others. So it's like finding the one that has the mix of what you're looking for, and that's the perfect segue, because you actually distill some orange lemon, mint and that you add those into some of your CBD. So let's talk about terpenes and what terpenes are and why you do that. By the way, I love, love, love, love that you actually distill your own and you put it into your own product. I think that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so since 76, we at the farm have been distilling our own mints, so you've got your peppermint, spearmint and native mint. And why we refer to it as our farm? My business partner. He married the farmer's daughter and so we work very much for sleep and it's a family farm. So, again, it is a separate business. It is run by different people but it's family, and one of the things that we found early on is that the terpenes were a huge part to every successful interaction with CBD, and so our studies as to why CBD isolate wasn't working for everybody was very simple. We're taking all of those good compounds out and only leaving one, which was CBD.
Speaker 2:Turpenes are great for oxidative damage or preventing oxidative damage. They're great to connect and bind to the cell, which CBD generally doesn't bind to the cell. It's THC that binds to the cell. It, just within its network, provides a therapeutic benefit to the cells in general. But as far as binding, you need those turpenes, and so when we're talking about what's there in the plant, you're naturally going to have terpenes and flavonoids, which again, like you talked about with other essential oils, you will have as well.
Speaker 2:An interesting study that we did was on the peripheral cell where we inflamed these cells and we took a 100% fine-grade CBD oil and then we compared it against our products and in every case we were more effective than an isolate. And we asked the researcher well, why is this the case? And he said it's because of your terpenes. Turpenes are these little magic binders that are enhancing everything that they touch. And I'm like, okay, I get it. And then we looked at our natural product versus our lemon and our orange, which are extracted as an essential oil from the rinds, but what we found is they were the most effective at reducing inflammation. And again we asked why? And he said terpenes, orange and lemon have their very own terpene profile. Yeah, yeah, so just interesting how it all came together. But having terpenes there, or a full plant or a broad plant meaning you're just removing the THC is far better every day, all day, than any isolate that's out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I love the science you and I are going to geek out after this.
Speaker 2:A few more things.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's dig into my favorite topic, which is agriculture and soil science, and just want to touch on a couple of things for my audience. So the first is that you guys have fully organic practices. You're not certified organic because you rotate crops in the way. Organic certification and if I misstate this please correct me because you rotate those crops and you do have organic onions and organic watermelons, but the way that you're growing the hunt, because it's not full time and it's not a ton, that's the only reason why you're not certified. Did I get that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did. We do have fields that are certified organic, but they're generally for the crops that are going to be rotated and sold into some of those partnerships where it's worth it. Right, Because we'd love to have everything certified organic, but in certain ways it doesn't make sense, because when you get certified organic, well then you have all of these omni. So what are the types of pesticides that you can start using that are organically approved? Well, sometimes our conventional land has tested better than our organic land, and it's simply because we're trying to always make sure that we're watching the pH balance of the soil, we're taking care of and eliminating all heavy metals that won't be found in our fields, but it's also herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, insecticides. We manage that very, very detailed every single year. So you're exactly right, we don't do it on our product from a. Hey, this is an organically farmed or an organically certified product, but it is organic best practices. There is never, ever, any heavy metals and all of those pesticides or herbicides. We just don't use them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's funny. I did a podcast episode with my friend from Farm to Future where we tried to explain the difference between a regenerative farm and products that you get from a regenerative farm the quality of the soil, the cover crops, the lack of tilling and just all the things that happen at a regenerative farm. And here in Virginia, where I live, I get a lot of my produce in my meat and everything from a regenerative farm. It's not a certified organic farm, but I've been to certified organic farms that are garbage. They are tilling, they are spraying, they are not doing cover crops. It's not good and it's not quality. I think it's hard to explain to people why regenerative practices, and then good organic practices on top of it, is better than what you would necessarily not always. I'm sure there's people doing it the right way, but in general, looking for a farmer who's growing food regeneratively is always going to be my first choice over an organic farm. That is not.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Some of the other things. I've seen video. I love that you guys have video when you're so transparent. I'm all about transparency. You guys hang. We already talked about how you hang dry all of it to make sure there's no mold. You shuck it, you grind it and then what's your extraction process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I love that you asked that. So typically in our industry it's going to be ethanol, butane, hexane or CO2. We don't believe in those practices simply because we don't believe that you can never get that residue fully out. Happy to be proven wrong, I just haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 1:Me either. I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 2:What we do is we actually will use a hyperbaric chamber method. Just think about a hyperchamber. It's restoring oxygen and it's also introducing a holistic state. Think of divers and you can probably speak to that. For us it's non-solvent and it's a little bit of heat and that negative pressure that is pulling out the essential oils. So we don't soak it in anything, we're not trying to harm the plant and really pull out those essential oils. The best things just take a little bit of time. So that hyperbaric chamber, as we've seen it, extracts the best profile. You've got your major cannabinoid and then you've got your minor cannabinoids and you keep your terpenes, you keep your flavonoids and it is just a beautiful mix. There's no other way to say it. But that's what we build every product from is that process. So no chemicals, no additives, nothing taken away, it's just simply a little bit of heat and pressure.
Speaker 1:I love it. I think that's so cool. So once that process is over, you've got all of that and you've extracted it, there's plant material left over, right. What comes off of the plant, the husk. I don't know what you call it. What do you do with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we keep it honestly like it's something that we can put back into the field, and the reason that we have this full Seed to Shelf process is so that we can take the off off product or the biomass and we can utilize it for other things.
Speaker 2:I mean, it is such a Amazing plant in what it can do for the ground, because even the ground itself is left, better than when we take the product out of the ground, and many products or many Farmers will just grow a hemp profile and then disc it back into the ground because of the Oxygen that gets put back into the ground because of the nutrient profile that's there and that again, ph balancing, of cleaning up a field.
Speaker 2:One of the most interesting things that we found when they, when we jump, jumped into Hemp is how hemp is used a lot of time for oil spills or any type that there's a Like environmental cleanup. Hemp is generally utilized to pull all of those toxins out of the ground. Now imagine, with this example, if you have farm ground that you're growing hemp and the ground is dirty, where is all of that going to end up? It's gonna end up in your product, and so that's why another thing that if you're not Connected to the farm with your product or your brand, you should seriously consider it, because how they plant, how they farm, how they harvest, how they treat the ground is A huge, crucial aspect to every effective product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's every, and hemp especially absorbs a lot of what is in the soil, but really all plants to some extent, a large extent do, as does our food, and so the soil quality, the nutrient profile of Soil, is everything when it comes to the quality of what you're growing in it. So I have to ask you because, as you said, there was kind of the CBD gold rush, right Like I'm there's, I can't even tell you how many CBD oil companies are in my inbox every day, like hey. We want to partner with you.
Speaker 1:There's so many I lost count a long time ago. They all have the very similar business structure. That's very different from what you guys do, but I think there's this idea that people have that high quality CBD is very expensive and that's because there's a lot of company selling very expensive CBD and you would think, with all the regenerative agriculture and all of the you know everything that you guys are doing it's not the most efficient way to create CBD right, and so your prices are super reasonable. So how do you keep your prices Lower than other companies when you're doing so much more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, and part of it comes down to the core of who we are. We don't want our products unattainable for just the average person, and the reason what that? We want that to be Such an important thing? That we could have more margins, we could have more profitability. But when we started, we all agreed that this was gonna be a product that could be bought by anybody, and so, rather than Hiking up the prices and talking about all this quality that justifies our marketing efforts or justifies the price, we ultimately can control our costs because we farm it, and Oftentimes what companies have to do is they have to buy it from a broker. Well, the broker has inserted themselves in there, the farmer gets paid, you're going to have trucking, shipping and all of these things that people are like. Well, there's all these costs. It has to be this.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be that it can be farmed right, it can be processed right and there can be supply chains that are built, that are vertically integrated and that allow you to be able to cut costs and only to be able to utilize margin for a purpose of growth and Sustainability, which is what we're trying to accomplish. It's not to get rich quick Like. There's plenty of those companies and they won't be around for a long time. We, however, see the vision of a long-term play here, with everything hemp from being materials in wood and wool and in textile and Concrete to being something, to where it ends up in our products, our foods. It can be some type of a protein, because most people don't know that but know this. But in the stem of the hemp you have a product called herd. That herd, if you scrape that out, is one of the highest Protein sources that are available, and so when I know that it's amazing.
Speaker 2:And so you have this capability of like. We should be eating it every day or having it every single day. Well, in the future, metnaturals will come out with a hemp based protein and you know hemp based greens, because you can't get enough of those compounds in your body, because they're cute. They're pure nutrients that will help our bodies get to a point where they're regulating themselves, because our bodies are superhuman, like Computers, and they can do so much. But we're exposed to endocrines, we're exposed to damage, we're exposed to environments that are dirty, food that is just garbage, and we wonder why our Computers or our bodies are overwhelmed. No, functioning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what we got to get back to is like, when you talk about regenerative farming, I love where you're going with that because I think that's the future of health and wellness, but we're gonna participate in that and that's why we always make sure that our prices are as low as they can be, to also make sure that we cover our farming responsibilities or the payments we make to the farm, that we're responsible for what we pay our Extractors and our manufacturers, like. We want to be a healthy business, so there has to be some level of margin and profitability. Sure, yeah, but again, our goal is to really make sure that people are getting the wellness component, which, in our belief, there's not a lot of other places that they can get. That.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's like a good place to segue into. How can people get their hands on this? And I just want to say that I have researched more CBD companies. I mean, that's literally all I do all day is research companies and their manufacturing processes and their testing practices and what's their sourcing, and I'm that annoying person that emails them and has a million questions that they don't want to talk to. And if I were going to utilize CBD in my life, I would buy it from you, and so I want my audience you know, to know.
Speaker 1:So you have a website that is phenomenal. They can go on the website. There is a 10% off discount code. If you guys know Wendy Catherine as a code, that's usually what will get you a discount. You can get 10% off of Metnaturals and I just really believe strongly. There are so many people out there that I talk to you every single day that are taking pain medication all the time because they're in pain, they are stressed out to the absolute max and they can't get sleep. People who aren't sleeping well, people who have, you know, autoimmune people. There's so many issues that people are fighting right now and I think that this is such an important tool for them to have access to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right on and thank you for bringing that up. And one thing that your customers or your listeners will be able to enjoy is that code. We don't shut it off. We keep it open and we keep it an evergreen type of the code because we want your customers, your followers and then our future customers to be able to be a part of a community. Right? And I would just say this anybody that's going into a process or into a relationship with CBD, be patient. Don't be in such a hurry to get a solution that you give up on it in a day or two, like I.
Speaker 2:Have oftentimes received messages from our customers like, hey, I tried it for two nights, your product didn't work, I'm not going to take it. And one particular scenario a gal from Florida. She said, hey, I take this. It doesn't work. What can you suggest? And I said, well, how many are you taking? And it was the sleep gels. She says I'm taking four a night. And I'm like, hold up. I'm like don't take that much. I'm like there's nothing on our bottle that says take that much.
Speaker 2:But I think sometimes people think a little is good. More must be better. And that's not necessarily the case. Your body, your endocannabinoid system, has to start utilizing those cannabinoids that come from a plant, because the cool thing about the endocannabinoid system is you create your own cannabinoids in your body, and so if, in the event that that is stressed, or put in a scenario where it can't produce as much as your body needs or for some reason it stops producing them, you need them from a supplementation source or from something of a cannabinoid like you would find in a hemp plant.
Speaker 2:But for our purposes, ultimately, what we want you to have is we want you to have happiness and balance, and that comes with just getting into a cadence, getting into a routine, and then watching and being that researcher that hey, what is actually happening.
Speaker 2:And I will tell you if you just take the recovery cream and put it on the bottoms of your feet, you have over 200 zones on the bottoms of your feet and it is going to take that and put it through your receptor highway and I will promise you you will have relaxation that is like nothing else and it is so calming and it is so peaceful. I do it before I go to sleep because I've been on my feet all day. They kill and I just want to be able to lay down and not have them be on fire. And that's why, from a neuropathy perspective, why we even created Metnaturals are my personal why. But that's my favorite product and I go very few nights where I'm not rubbing the bottoms of my feet with my recovery cream, because for me it is such a vital part to my sleep cycle and to being able to wake up and then hit it hard the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a good point. A lot of people do similar things with supplements If they're deficient in something and they take something they're like. Well, I don't feel any different and I hear that a lot, and I'm like it takes 60 to 90 days for your body to adjust to that new nutrient, that new thing that you just put into your body, for your liver to turn over, for your cells to turn over. Right, your body is taking its time and I think we do live in a quick fix. Give me a pill. We want that right now. And, like you said, patience, it takes patience. You have to, like take some deep breaths, do it every day, be consistent with it and give it a shot, and I think for a lot of people, a product like this can be like changing.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited, I'm so glad you're here and I'm going to come up to your farm and I'm going to go check it out and we're going to do that and so I can report back with my own eyes and I'm just so happy you came on and I'm so happy that we had an opportunity to have this conversation, because I know it's going to help people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise, wendy, like I think that what you're doing has so much value, specifically to people who are like I won't take the time and do the research, I'm not going to put in the time and the detail to really find out what's going on.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting in our world, where people are starting to wake up and that's what I'll use, that word, wake up to their health and their wellness that everybody's not on their team. Their favorite food provider is not necessarily on their team, and so what can we do to like both manage the health and take charge of our health that we have and then also intentionally put in wellness strategies? And one thing that I'll say, and then I can end but the CBD plant or the hemp plant has so many omegas, they're rich in omegas, and so when you think about it, from taking like a fish oil or taking something where you're again supplementing it, if you can get back to a plant based Omega, I'm telling you like you can enhance that feel or that sense of like. Okay, I'm doing really well, I'm balanced, I'm holistically whole.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being here, Scott.
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you, I appreciate it.