🌿Herbal Medicine, Lifestyle, & Cancer with Chanchal Cabrera MSc, FNIMH, (RH)AHG

In this episode, I had the honor of chatting with a brilliant teacher of mine, Medical  Herbalist & Horticulture Therapist, Chanchal Cabrera MSc, FNIMH, RH(AHG) , who’s spent years exploring how herbalism can coexist with modern cancer care. 

Chanchal began her journey in herbalism and took that deep plant wisdom right into cancer research and care. We talking about how herbs can play a crucial role in supporting patients through their cancer journeys, from reducing treatment side effects to helping those in end-of-life stages find peace.  

We also get real about the politics of food, and how the system is set up to keep us sick. Good nutrition should be a right, not a privilege, ya know?  It was truly a beautiful and inspiring conversations to have.

In a world where health care is often a maze of complicated decisions, Chanchal shows us how herbs can offer patients not just physical relief but emotional and spiritual comfort as well. 

Whether you’re an herbal enthusiast, someone touched by cancer, or just someone interested in alternative healing

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the herbalist path, a podcast where you'll discover how to make your own herbal remedies at home so that you can take better care of yourself better care of your family and better care of our planet. I'm Mel, I'm a clinical herbalist environmental educator and mountain living mama with this crazy passion for teaching more mamas and their little loves how to use plants as medicine in a safe, effective and tasty way so that there can be an herbalist in every home. Again, it's an absolute honor to have you on the journey down the herbalist path with me so that together we can make herbalism hashtag spread like wild flowers. You are in for a treat with this conversation I had with one of my greatest teachers Ms. Chen Shah Cabrera was a medical herbalist that specializes and integrative oncology. She is brilliant. She is the founder of Innisfree garden up in the Vancouver British islands. And she is a magnificent teacher, healer educator. And we had some great conversations around cancer and lifestyle and dietary choices in this world and how if we just shift some of those, maybe the 40% cancer rate and humans would go down. So we really talked about a lot in there. Charles shares so many golden nuggets, I know you are going to dig this conversation. So enjoy. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode on the herbalist path. Today's guest it's such an honor to have here. It's Miss Chen Shaw Cabrera. She's one of my teachers from a lot ago when I was studying clinical herbalism. And she's always had this incredible impact on me on my herbal journey. And she is incredibly brilliant. She is a medical herbalist specializing in the field of oncology, and she is so wise. She runs the Innisfree farm up on Vancouver Island, NBC, I believe that's where you are. And she's also the author of a really incredible new book I'm so excited to share with you, I hope you guys go out and grab it. It's holistic cancer care. And anytime somebody reaches out to me with advice and wisdom on cancer care, I assigned them to John Shaw right away. So it's an honor to have you on the show. So thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting me to be on the show. That sounds like a big pair of shoes you just built for me to step into.

I think you've been wearing the shoes for quite a while. But that could be hard to recognize when you're just in the shoes, you don't always see it. So yeah, you're somebody I've always really, really looked up to and admired. And you, again really did make a profound impact on me in my earlier years of studying herbalism. So I'm so grateful that this book is out. And it's there for everybody. You know, not everybody can have access to you and your beautiful farm and your garden and be up on that island. So least we can get a piece of your wisdom and knowledge there. But I'm really curious. You have been in this field for quite some time. And I really would love to take a step back a few decades or so to a young merchant Chawla and just where you got started on your herbal medicine journey. Love to hear about that. Yeah, I'm

happy to talk about that. Before we went live recording here, you and I commented on our respective bookshelves and I see behind you the medical herbalism book by David Hoffman. And David Hoffman was my door into herbal medicine. So I was brought up on an organic farm in west Wales, back before it was called Organic when it was still just site free. And my parents were part of that sort of back to the land hippie movement in the 70s trying to be self sufficient on a small acreage and David Hoffman lived nearby. And when my father became ill he consulted with David and David at the time was a new grad from herbal medicine school and just getting himself started. And he was very gracious to come out to our property and walk the land and show my dad some of the herbs he picked for himself, notably meadow sweet, which my father continued to pick every year for himself for over 40 years. And then David told me years later that dad took them aside and said you No, my my daughter, she's 14. And she's kind of getting interested in hopes but I think might be the wrong herbs. And so could you you know such a straight. So David allowed me to go backstage in his dispensary see him pouring help and pouring some of the tinctures looking, you know, walk in the land with him looking at the plant and it just awakened me to the medicinal value I already love plants I have scrapbooks full of dried pressed flowers with a Latin name that I've looked up. And that was clearly plant oriented. But David made me realize that this is more than just flowers. It's more than just sort of intellectual exercise of botany. And I was 14 and I didn't know that I could or would be a herbalist and then I left school at 18. And I went to live in India for a couple of years. And I worked part of that time in an orphanage, and in a TB clinic with Tibetan refugees. And in the TB clinic, they were using natural medicines, Tibetan Medicines, and getting cero conversions, which I've later learned is supposed to be possible. But they were apparently you know, curing TB with herbs. And so somewhere about two years in I had one of those sort of epiphany moments like, why am I I was actually on a beautiful beach in Sri Lanka board. And I remember so clearly thinking, I've got more to offer the world. And why am I sitting on a beach in Thailand with a bunch of stoners, you know, like when I do something useful. So back, I went to the UK and found my way to Kabul, medicine school. And back then, early 80s, there was only one really serious herbal medicine school in the UK. It happened to be the school that David Hoffman had trained at, although David was ahead of the of the classroom component, he did a correspondence program. But I went in and did four years of public medicine school full time in England, graduated in 1987. And I've been in practice ever since. Wow.

That is such a cool story. Like I asked this question often, and how fun to hear about it originating from like, you know, between you and David, many of my very, very impactful teachers and people really bringing the importance of herbal medicine to the forefront for for this world. So I'm so grateful that epiphany happened for you. So you could continue on and share this wisdom with so many and, and help heal so many in such beautiful ways. One of the things I like to talk about is making herbalism spread like wild flowers. And I thought of that before we hit record on this episode, I was talking about 2020 When we had to evacuate, evacuate due to fires. And at that time, I had my product line and I had a tea called respiratory rescue. And so I gave pounds of it to the firefighters as a big thank you. And at that moment, I was like, oh, we need herbalism to spread like wildflowers instead of these wildfires that are spreading. So that's a side story. But your story is really, really cool. And I'm glad you ditched the stoners and went for all the other great choices. Not that there's not incredibly powerful medicine within that plan. But there's a big difference between the recreational use and the medicinal rose. So how did you get into the world and really specialising in the world of cancer care and herbal medicine

that's big. It is a slightly unusual avenue to have landed in. I know that for many years in clinical practice, I didn't really even take cancer patients because I felt that it was too big. It was too scary that drugs are so big, what could the host possibly do that the drugs don't do. I felt pretty helpless and almost hopeless around it. And then I was 15 years in clinical practice. And I had a very busy practice four days a week, you know, 10 to 12 patients a day. Really solid and it was great. I was definitely helping people who were definitely helping people. But I actually reached a point where I got that is although it was gratifying to see people get better. I no longer felt like I was learning much from it. I was doing a lot of effective. Actually pretty much primary care. Some of my patients came to me, you know, instead of going to the doctor, although I always encourage them to have a GP on hand. But I was dealing with asthma and eczema, menopause and arthritis and all the run of the mill things that we all deal with in Liberal practice. And it was gratifying to see people get better. And I do have shops and a product line and all these other avenues of delivering herbs to the world. But I found that I as a practitioner was no longer learning enough. And I, in my business, and in my clinic, I was too busy to be studying, I actually couldn't do it all. So I took a leave of absence, and I enrolled myself in a Master of Science degree in herbal medicine in the University of Wales. And I was in the first cohort that went through subsequently a number of our other well known herbalists Daniel, Daniel, Matthew word, Christine Dennis, there are quite a number of other North American herbalist took that program. But when I went through in the first cohort, they basically enrolled us and then we sat down on this, what do you want your curriculum to look like? And it wasn't quite that loose, because it had been accredited by the University of Wales, but it was a a de a self directed learning program. So I did all the required courses, we have to do, you know, statistics, all kinds of, of not variable stuff, actually. And ethics and jurisprudence, and all kinds of things that pertain to clinical practice, but weren't directly about herbs. And then we come around starting to choose our thesis. And I did not know what that was going to be I was sort of casting around for some ideas. And I was at that time actually working in a managerial capacity with Donnie yams in his clinic. So Donnie, is, of course a very brilliant herbalist. But back then, he was so busy with his client care that the business end of the practice was not being well attended to. And so he hired me literally, as a management consultant to go in and help to set up systems and policies and procedures and paperwork in his office. So I was working quite closely with Donnie, and discussing with him about my master's that I was about to be starting, and what would it look like? And he said, Well, I really want some research done in my clinical work. I feel like I'm getting incredible results here. And somebody needs to be tracking it and figuring out what's going on. So how about if I hire you to do research two days a week, you can work in the clinic a couple of days a week, and basically as an apprentice to him, and then use that research for your masters. And that's exactly what I did. So after 15 years of clinical practice, I went back and apprenticed myself for Master. And Donnie continues to be a great teacher. For me, he is very brilliant. He has not got the academic credentials that some people seem to need in order to take a practitioner seriously. But I have to give Donnie credit for giving me not just a skill set, but a level of confidence in the herbal medicine, not confidence in myself, but confidence in the herbs to be able to do something quite impressive and dramatic. And I would never suggest that the herbal medicine cures cancer that's not at all what we're talking about. But as a collaborative discipline, in a team approach, there is so much that herbal medicine can do to facilitate this journey for people to no matter what they're doing with conventional medical care whether they're in full chemotherapy, or finished with chemo or not doing chemo or wherever they are in their journey. The herbs have something to offer. And sometimes it's the very foundational, you know, the adaptogens and building some kidney function and supporting the heart. And other times it's right in there using herbs to augment or amplify a specific chemo drug at a specific receptors. We go right through that range of approaches in my clinical practice. So I graduated from the master's program in 2003. And have pretty much made my focus Oh, wow, that's a long time. It's 20 years isn't that I've been pretty much focused now in oncology. I absolutely have an open practice. I see all sorts of people with all sorts of conditions. But I will say that one of the interesting things that's happened to me over the years with working with such difficult condition as cancer is It's opened my eyes to how much herbal medicine has to offer and all kinds of complex cases. So I absolutely work with a wide array array of conditions, but I tend to get almost all referrals from practitioners who've reached their limit. So my cases tend to be very complicated cases where they are lots of moving parts, lots of drugs. I've got patients on And he rejection medication after transplants, who are, you know, who now have cancer. And you know, it's very, very tricky. I do lots lots of research on behalf of each patient. So a 90 minute first intake interview with me equates to about another three hours of work from Absolutely, because I take every drug that they're using, and I cross reference it against every herb that I want to use to see if there's any known not just known interactions, but any plausible pathways where interactions may occur. Because if they're not known, it doesn't mean they're not happening. It means that nobody's noticed or tracked or asked for I'm often the one saying your drugs clearing through this mechanism. Therefore, this herb is safe, because it doesn't go through that mechanism. Or maybe it's not so safe, or it's going to induce that clearance enzyme. Therefore, you may need to adjust the drug dose, don't talk to your doctor about that, you know, so it's very much about that navigating through their individualized medical journey, in collaboration with other healthcare professionals. I'm not licensed to practice primary care, and nor do I practice primary care, I'm very, very clear about that. I actually turned away a patient recently, a young woman with a very obvious breast cancer, but she had elected not see a doctor or have a biopsy of it. And I declined that case, I said, I'm not prepared to be to have that level of responsibility. Obviously, this is cancer, we can see what's going on. But until you know what kind exactly what kind of breast cancer and exactly what stage in grade, and have a monitoring plan in place, I can't be responsible for that. So I actually turned that case away, because I didn't feel like she was willing to work with me wanting to do her journey, and have me sort of on the side of that. I might know if you want herbal medicine, that we're going to do it properly and properly means collaborative with other healthcare.

I think a lot of people, especially right now come up with that kind of approach that yeah, that young lady may have had, because they think, oh, gosh, I'm going to take herbs because they're natural. And I now don't trust the Western medical system, which is a brilliant system. It's a system that can save lives. Yes, it's also a corrupt and pretty yucky system. But in a case like cancer, you need that system to integrate with those herbs. So I often share this with people like, hey, herbs are not an instant fix pill, we're trained to think that they are and people often come to me as I'm sure they made or to you, but or maybe you're just past that level, but often saying, hey, Mel, I have XYZ issue, what Herb do I take? And I'm just like, well, I don't answer that on social media, because it is a 90 Minute intake, I want to know all about you. And that does take another three hours of research, as you said. So it can be much more complex, and just listening to your story of how you got into the world of oncology. And, you know, learning with and for Donnie is another one of my teachers and I have his books on my shelves as well. And I actually applied for a job with him right after I closed my product line, but I didn't get it was close. But it all happens for a reason. Just listening to your story as one of the people that has inspired me so much on this journey. And you've obviously got a few years ahead of me. It's beautiful to hear, because I'm like, Oh, I resonate with that, like, I want to learn more. I want to keep learning and keep learning and keep learning. And each one of those cases that you get, you get to learn more, because you're doing more research. So absolutely brilliant, the work that you do. And I want to just step back to Gosh, I don't know if we could call it basics, but just back to cancer. I think that everybody knows of cancer, right? They know somebody who has been affected by cancer in their lives.

But what is cancer? What is it? Well, okay,

that's a loaded question. I know, but we could shorten it to you. Yeah, I

mean, you're absolutely right, that probably everybody listening to this has been touched by cancer in their own life or their friends or their family or their loved ones or somebody in their community. Because it's currently estimated that 40% of us are going to have a cancer diagnosis in our lifetime and that's current but it's going up. So you know, used to be 30%. Now it's 40%. And so that's a pretty high statistic. So it's very rare individual who's going to get away without having some exposure to this diagnosis either themselves or somebody close to them. So, yes, people are aware of the prevalence of cancer. I think a lot of people are not yet aware of how much they can do to help themselves. Not only of course, with treatment and you know, care of a herbalist, etc, but well before that with with prevention. So, you know, yes, 40% of us are likely to get a cancer diagnosis in our lifetime. But the National Cancer Institute, which is a pretty mainstream conservative organization, they estimate that 65% of all cancers are preventable through diet and lifestyle. Yeah, let's

talk about that.

Why are we not spending 65% of our cancer care budget on prevention? That's my question. I'm Canada's I don't know the US I imagine it's not very different. But we spend about less than one cent of the of the annual budget on health care spent on prevention. And that includes things like quit smoking campaigns, and get active campaigns and even mammograms, which, weirdly are considered prevention. I don't really get how that works. It's like, no, that's already dying. But anyways, we as a society have lost the plot, as far as I'm certain we are. The medical literature that I read, I'm, I'm quite a, I spend a lot of time reading very mainstream medical literature, because that's what my patients are dealing with. That's what their doctors are reading. I want to know what they're thinking and saying. So I try to keep myself abreast of the current medical thoughts, especially around cancer. And right now, there's a lot of talk about things like ultra processed foods, and sucralose, which is a synthetic sugar that is now known to cause DNA mutations in gut lining cells. And of course, colorectal cancer is a very rapidly increasing cancer right now. And so, so there are many things in our society that are actively contributing to cancer quite apart from things like airborne pollution and smoking and whether the things that we choose to put in on our bodies or in our homes are contributing significantly. So when you say what is cancer? I think we need to take even a bigger question, which is, where the hell did we go wrong? Right? Why are we as a as a as a species so far removed from any kind of natural rhythm or natural lifestyle and I don't mean, you know, eating granola, and and, you know, living in the bush, but just eating your, you know, of course, the National Cancer Institute says we should have 10 servings of fruit and veg a day. I mean, I know I struggled to do that. So I'm sure most of our patients struggle, but five a day, wouldn't that be a good goal? And you know, there's lip service paid to that, but it's not emphasized. So your schools still have vending machines, school lunches are a travesty of ill health on a plate. Hospitals have fast food franchises in the hospitals. What is this about? Why do we need to be dealing with cancer, we shouldn't be dealing with lifestyle, we should be dealing with healthy habits from infancy from childhood from the get go, we should be teaching kids to cook before they leave high school. We should be serving when I live in a small town. And it's an agricultural based community. So we have fantastic farms here. We have almost 100 certified organic farmers in our community. And they got together many of those farmers, and they organized school lunch programs. So many of our primary schools now have a school lunch program where the food is coming from the local farms. It's all fresh. It's not all vegetarian. There's meat as well, because we have meat farms here too. But it's grass fed meat. It's naturally raised animals it's and in many cases children are involved with visiting the farms with even preparing some of the foods. So this to me is what we should be doing to treat cancer. We shouldn't have to beat as much cancer as we do. We should be working at a much more simplistic level, much more basic level, which after all isn't justified can So residents about heart disease, it's about diabetes, it's about mental health. Now we know 90% of your serotonin is manufactured by your gut flora. So your mood is literally governed by your bowels. And so you know, gut instincts and gut feelings are very real. So if we're eating the average North America 152 pounds of refined sugar per person per year. That's right, 152 pounds. What's that doing your microbiome? Why do we have this epidemic of mental health? Is it because we're so disassociated from nature, I believe, and I know you're a world have been a wilderness guide, I think you would agree that disassociation from nature itself is a big part of pathology. But with that comes lack of understanding of what natural means in your personal life. So how do you bring yourself back to proper sleep habits, better stress management, exercise and physical activity and diet. And to me, that's where health is beginning. And the rest of it is, you know, we we should be putting ourselves out of business. By doing health care, not sickness care. We don't have a health care system in America or in Canada, we have sickness care, and that is flat wrong. So in my book, that's where I start, yes, I ended up with very specific pathways of individual students. And what I've now reframed, I call my work now orthomolecular herbalism. We know what orthomolecular nutrition where you take this kind of B vitamin or this type of like folic acid for this reason in this pathway, but the herbs can be that explicit as well. herbs can be that precise. And I certainly go into a lot of that in my book. At the back of the book, we just want practitioner focus. But the front of the book, which is intended to be a bit more accessible to patient is all about, let's just get you healthy, and then outcasts. Because after all, if you cure cancer by whatever means drugs, surgeries, whatever it does, that gets you through that crisis. Now what how would you go on for the next 1020 30 years after your cancer diagnosis and stay? Well? And I think that's a really interesting question. Because many people come through a cancer journey, and are profoundly ill at the end of it, they may not have active cancer in their body, but they have damaged their kidneys and liver from the chemo, they've damaged their bone marrow from the chemo, they might have burned out their gut lining, compromise their taste and swallowing and all those things that then lead them to make not great choices for their own general health in the future. And then they're still at risk of heart disease diabetes, depression, and of course of cancer either coming back or a new cancer coming. So to my way of thinking we've got to we herbalists are also we as a as a nation, have really profoundly lost our way in absolutely is and how to achieve health and how to maintain health, it should not be taking high end expensive, specialized herbal medicines, for treating cancer, that should be the last resort. And it really should be focused on healthy lifestyles from the get go, and herbalists have a great role to play there. But also, moms have a great role to play their teachers have a great role to play that, gosh, the government could have a great role play there.

Wouldn't that be glorious, if we could get the government involved?

So I've got a bit of a rant going, I think here I'll stop at that point. Because we could go on for a while

Oh, for so long, and everything that you're saying, I'm like, Gosh, I wish I could just blast this part of this podcast episode on level 20 of one to 10 volume for the whole world to hear because it's so true. And this is one of the things I bring up to a lot of my students and other people like our school lunch, and our hospitals are feeding directly into the problem. It is a whole sick care system from the food system to the health care system. This is why you are still in business like this is this is sad and gross. And we know it like don't people know this or am I just fortunate to have learned from someone like you like

this question now. You know, I actually think a lot of people do know it's hard but it there is a I mean, there's a societal disconnect isn't there between what we know is best or better, and what we're actually able to access a Ford, or find in our communities that I just wrote a blog post on my website about food deserts and food swamps. And your food desert, I think quite a few of us now understand that it's an area of the community where there's very, very poor or very few food choices. But a foods want is a little bit of a newer concept, which is where there's plenty of food available. It just happened to be really poor quality,

food, like stuff,

food, like stuff. And so this is actually a this is partly complicated, at least, let's say, by, by inequalities in our society. So of course, if you could buy whole beans and whole grains and fresh vegetables, it's probably going to save money to some extent, but it costs money to you have to buy, you're buying in bulk, you need a vehicle to get to the shops, you need to be able to bring it over, you need to store it, it takes gas to cook those beans, well, if you don't have money to put on your gas bill, then actually buying a prepared, ready meal that you can microwave is actually going to save you money because you're not having to spend the money on the gas bill. And you don't have to go so far to get it. And if you have to travel far and don't have a vehicle, then you're on transit, is there even transit, I don't have a driver's license. So I'm super aware of transit or lack there off. When I chose to move to the countryside, I had to go house hunting for a place that had access to transit, because that's critical for my well being I need to be able to get around in my town. So for people that are of marginal income, marginal education, immigrants, et cetera, they are not able to access good food, even if they know about it. Yeah. And so this is a societal problem. This is a cultural problem, this isn't a problem was not having inflammation, it's a problem was not acting on that information in a way that's equitable, and accessible for everybody. Yeah, that is a whole different problem.

It really is. And as you were speaking about those demographics of people that don't have as much access to it, I think that's, it's even much larger than that. And they're also becomes the point like, as a mother, and somebody who's aware of all of this, it becomes very challenging to find the time to prepare those foods, you know, to make them palatable. So our children are like you, because somewhere along the line, our children have been exposed to the addictive food like stuffs that maybe we didn't intend for them to get exposed to, or we didn't know any better. And I think it also goes back to like, the 40s, and the 50s. And the 60s, when everybody was so excited about this convenience, food. Wow. Fast food restaurants. Wow, microwave dinners. Look how quick this is, like my mom's generation. She tries to do well, but she doesn't get it because she was raised on that, like, we need this instant fix this satisfaction, this level of convenience. And it goes back to what you were saying like if we could all reconnect with nature,

as a big hole, like

nature and how it heals us nature and how you can grow your food and you can grow your medicine and and you can step outside and take that depressed mood and step outside for five minutes and come back feeling 90% Better, at least that works for me. I know it works for a lot of other people. I've suggested such things to as well. So gosh, I could I could rant on with this. No, one of the

things that I find quite interesting in terms of how we've veered off from nature is that in if you read around the topic of the evolution of eating, we there's actually a theory they haven't found the gene set but there's a theory called the Thrifty Gene. And the Thrifty Gene theory suggests that in nature, an animal will always seek out the highest calorie return on investment. So there is more nutritional value for an AMA for a predator animal to hunt down prey than to go and chew on some leaves. They will always chew on the ripest fruit not the sound fruit there will always go for the right this grain not the not the unripe grain is wherever the calories are more dense. That is the desirable food in nature in animal in the eye. The whole world. So we have evolved from that. With this predilection for speaking out the highest calorie return, we can get on the lowest effort. As calories burned, more calories eaten, that's what nature designed us to do, because that's what animals need to do for their survival. Now for us, the supermarket is where we go to hunt for food. And so we are instinctively drawn to the sweet, calorie, dense, Fatty, calorie dense foods, not to the vegetables and the whole grains and the things that take a lot more effort not just to prepare, but more effort to eat and digest. And this is actually genetically programmed into us to crave sweet stuff. So Michael Pollan talks about this quite a bit of his work in moving in The Omnivore's Dilemma or in Food Matters, some of his previous books about the Thrifty Gene that is driving us as a species, to crave the foods that we eat foods in inverted commas that we've made to satisfy that innate urge. And so it isn't just about, you don't have enough willpower, or you're a bad person, because it choosing the chocolate bar, there's actually a genetic drive in that. So in order to change that, we have to do some pretty serious societal change, not just about educating people, because after all, as we've already discussed, a lot of people know better than what they're doing, and I will speak for myself, I could speak for you, I'm sure we don't always make the best choices. Um, so So and we know that there's still this urge for the sweet treat or the quick fix. And so it does take, I think, government sort of effort to change the availability of those foods to make them more accessible. And, and the other thing that I think has been very interesting in research today around food choices, is that because we have allowed ourselves to build up this unbelievable sugar intake, I mean, I did, when I did herb school in the 80s, I did my graduating paper, on diet and disease. And I learned at the time, so that was 1986, I guess, that the average North American or British person, I was in the UK, was eating about 120 pounds of refined sugar per person per year, it's now more than 30 pounds more than that in 30, some years. And at the, at the turn of the 20th century at about 1900, it was about five pounds per person per year. So we're gaining a pound or two of sugar intake a year, on average right now in the last 120 or so years. And what that has done is apart from of course, causing diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, all these things, it's actually changed our microbiome in such a way that we now have chronic nationwide dysbiosis. And we have bacteria that crave sugar. So constantly sending chemical messages to the brain, feed me feed me. And it's very, very hard to override that we are a product of our gut flora. And they are sending a message to our brain all the time that they want sugar. And if that sugar is really readily available, and it's cheaper than the healthier food, and we've corrupted our tastebuds to the point that we prefer it, then that's what we eat. So that all sounds a little bit doom and gloom, like, oh my gosh, how do we get over all of that? But, you know, it's like, that old thing. How do you eat an elephant is one bite at a time, you know, for us in clinical practices. We start with ourselves and our families, and showing by example, and then we start teaching and we start telling our patients and the root of the word doctor is the same as the root of the word teacher. We are educators in our clinical practices. So we teach our patients how to do this better and it's very slow and it's one person at a time and we're talking to the elite who can afford to come for private health care with a herbalist not on insurance and all those things. So it is drops in the ocean. But the ocean is made up of many drops and so everyone counts Some, that's what I have to hold in my mind all the time when I see this seemingly insurmountable hill that we, as herbalists are trying to climb. It's like you just put one foot in front of the other. And that's how you get to the top.

Also beautifully said, and I just want to reflect back a moment, because obviously, I could have a gigantic yes to everything you just said. But along with our microflora just saying, Hey, give me more sugar, give me more sugar, and those chemical messengers, messages, and you walk into the grocery store, there's also the people that are being paid to create beautiful packaging and to formulate the food, like stuff to be even more addictive. So it's like, it's a struggle, for sure. But it can be done. And, and that is beautiful. I love the analogy of the drops in the ocean, we can just keep putting more drops in there. So that is incredible and great. It's it's a, it's a mountain to climb. And we can all talk stories about mountains to climb, but a worthwhile one, for sure. So I do want to just touch a little bit back on some of the things in your book, and cancer and cancer care and how herbal medicine can be complimentary for somebody going through cancer care. And and you know, I'm sure you'll you'll touch on this because you already began to with a woman that you had to turn away because she wouldn't collaborate beyond wanting gesture, natural instant fix. So how does herbalism play into this cancer care world?

Well, first, let me let me clarify that particular person has in fact elected to go into medical care and get the information she needs so that we can work together, I didn't require her to do chemo or do anything in the system, I really required her to find out what she's feeling with. So that we could actually have eyes open, not blindfolded as we go into treatment. So you know that I would say that there is never really a place of herbal medicine doesn't have something to offer. So I have worked with patients from before they got a diagnosis when they just have a suspicion all the way through to end of life care. And there is a role for herbs in all of that. And you know, as a herbalist one of the things out, especially in the cancer field, one of the things you have to come to terms with is that not everybody is going to do well, not everybody is going to make it through. And so then you have to look at, well, what is the role of herbs there. And sometimes the role of herbs is to help somebody to die better, by which I do not mean giving them hopes to hasten, I mean, helping them to have more mental clarity, to have less pain, less collateral damage from the conventional treatments, to give them more peace or more sense of autonomy. Canada, I think Oregon also enlightened enough governments to have medical assistance in dying. And Canada has recently agreed to have advance advance. On Monday, that word they use but where you can advance intention where you can say, I know that this is going to be happening at some point in the future. And if I get to a place where I can't speak or make my wishes known I advanced directive, where they can say when I get to this point, that's when I want to call it now but they may not be able to speak at that point. So So to be that's a compassionate thing for somebody to be allowed to choose their own time and place and set and setting for their passing. And sometimes I have helped people at that point with herbs to keep some calm herbs to help with some of the grief of support the family. I do a lot of bereavement coaching and supporting around passing over. And I do not see that as a failure of herbal medicine at all. After all it's you know, was a Benjamin Franklin who said there'll be two certainties in life, death and taxes. I think so. Might be misquoting but you know it is going to happen to everybody, no matter how much you love them. That isn't going to do it. And so how do we then navigate that journey with grace and beauty and compassion and care and the least trauma to all parties? So herbal medicine has a place right across that spectrum. Whether you are helping somebody to not get cancer, whether you're helping them through their surgery, through their chemo through their radiation through not doing those things, for whatever reasons, or now, of course, with the new immunotherapies, very exciting drugs, very effective drugs, but still a lot of side effects. And then eventually, at some point in the journey for everybody, there will be an endpoint, whether it's cancer or something else. And so how do we then honor that process because as a, as a people, we have tended to turn away to hide away from death, dying, put people into facilities, we don't have to be with them in our home in our home, while they're dying, you know, they're mostly hooked up to big machines and those kind of drama are bringing people back from the brain can 80% of your healthcare costs are spent in the last six months of life and on average, and so the Denial of Death has also allowed us to become very fearful of it. And to, to therefore as herbalists not really have a good skill set, or how to support someone is going through that. And this came, this came up for me quite early on in my football, oncology practice. And a very, very close friend of mine developed cervical cancer. And Cervical cancer is really tough, because, first of all, it doesn't respond to most chemo therapies or conventional treatments. And it rarely gets that bad because women today get pap smears get diagnosed early. And it's very treatable at that early stage, we don't actually see an awful lot of cervical cancer in North America today. Other countries, it's a little bit different. But because of regular pap smears, it's not that common. So I had a very dear friend, very, very dear friend who had an abnormal pap smear, and done nothing about it not done follow up. Four years later, she was diagnosed with full blown cervical cancer. And I have just finished up my program with Donnie and my master's was just starting up as a cancer specialist. So I came in all guns blazing as to the first two that I read on the read about this. And she just stopped me one day and you know, for about a month she let me go on and her like that. And then she stopped me one day, and she said, You know what, you don't understand. She said, I'm dying. And I No, no, no, no, we we haven't done this and that. And she said, No, you don't understand. She said, I'm ready. I'm like, but you're only 52. And she said, I know that. But I've been a broken woman all my life. She had a long history of abuse, she'd lost a son, she'd had all kinds of drama and trauma. And she said, I'm actually done, I'm actually ready to go. And it was such a big lesson for me that when the patient is ready, our job is not to fight that our job is not to say, but But have you tried this? Have you thought about the other it's actually to say, that's your choice, I'm honoring your choice? How can I help you to go through this journey in the best way and that is what we did with Ernie and myself and another close friend of the therapist. We held her hands while she navigated that pathway until the very end that held her as she died. And and it was incredibly difficult as a healer, to allow someone to make that choice and for mental capacity, a young 52 year old, beautiful woman that we just thought had such a life ahead of her and she didn't want it. And to honor that choice was a really interesting journey for me. It made me very, it was very humbling. And it made me really rethink my role as a herbalist. My role as an herbalist is not to tell people what to do. My role as an herbalist is to support them to do what's best for them. And what works,

works within their life circumstances. Yeah, that is a great story. Thank you so much for sharing it. It makes me feel good because over the years and running my apothecary and having friends reach out to me, or they're like someone I love has cancer or I love has cancer. I always tell them about you that tell them about Dani and then I give herbs to support the nervous system to just help calm and and support the emotions through that kind of really challenging challenging time in life but inevitable time in life so what a lesson to learn though when you're just like yes, I know all these amazing healing herbs let's

fight it. Oh, wait. Yeah,

this is coming for all of us and and I can support you went another way. So gosh, tential it's been such an honor to chat with you, you are brilliant and amazing. I said before we hit publish on this or hit record for this podcast that I've always wanted to come and study even more with you up on your farm NBC and I haven't had the opportunity to, but Good golly, does this, this conversation makes me want to even more. But if somebody is out there listening to this show, and they're like, Wow, yes. How do I reach you? Or how can I talk to John Shaw? How can I get her book? How can these people

find you? Um, so there's a number of avenues. I have a website, of course, just my name, Chantel pereira.com. And the book is available on the website. But I will say honestly, if you're in the US, probably better to go through Amazon. Because otherwise you're paying shipping from Canada, you can also go directly to the publisher.

Can I ask you if your book is on bookshop.org yet,

don't think it's on book shop. I don't know that.

Maybe it's a woman owned company that supports local independent bookshops only should

be a public show, which is storybooks, sto R E y. So suddenly, the book is available that way. There is also a couple of learning opportunities, people if they're interested, I do run an internship here on my farm, which is residential. I'm just finishing up for the season now. But people come for anywhere from four weeks to four months, and stay with me. And we work 25 hours a week in the gardens, we do a range of different classes. I kind of adjusted according to the group I have. So if it's this summer, it's been all advanced students who've been doing clinical case reviews, sometimes it's a bit more beginner, it just depends on the year, but certainly interning with me in on my property. And I asked you, Ron, it's not just a herb farm, it's botanical garden. So we're open to the public. And we do a lot of public outreach. We're one of the five registered Botanic Gardens in our province. And the other way that people can learn from me if they wish, if they're more of the beginner level, just getting started with herbs or of the community herbalist kind of style, then I would suggest that they go through the shift network, because the shift network has just hosted a seven part series that I was teaching that sort of follows the book, actually, it's the first part of the book in classroom format. So they're 90 minute classes, seven of them. And that is available indefinitely on the shift network. So they can just Google my name, it's shift, and they'll find that series and it's still available to register into and will remain open for registration indefinitely. So that's a really good entry point for people if they want to learn more about oncology care for themselves and their family and their community. And if there are practitioners listening to this show, and they would like to get a bit more, then I will be starting up in the new year and advanced series that will be in person and online. It will be live stream from the in person classroom. And that will be probably six days over a stretch of time of advanced oncology care for clinical herbalists. And so that's gonna be a lot more for practitioners. Beautiful. I

listen to all of those. And I'm like, may I please? Like, how can I get it so my family can just hang out while I'm studying on your farm. And they could just hang out up around BC I'm sure they'd love it. One of these days, I will make it happen. But thank you so much for your time. I know you have more things to do with your day. So it has been an absolute honor to have you on the show. And I can't wait to share it with people.

Yeah, a great pleasure. Thank you so much. I'm glad we were able to make date work. I know we had a few missteps along the way to get to this date. So I appreciate your patience. Route. me to thank you so much. My pleasure.

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the herbalist path. Being on this journey with you is absolutely incredible. If you dig this episode, please leave me a review on your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends so that together we can make our herbalism hashtag spread like wild flowers. I don't know another note. I must mention that while I know you're getting some good info here. It's important to remember that this podcast is purely for entertainment and educational purposes. is and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment. While the information in this podcast is absolutely relevant herbs were differently for each person and each condition. That's why I recommend you work with a qualified practitioner, whether that be another herbalist and naturopath or your doctor. So thank you again. I am truly honored that you're tuning into these episodes and on the path with me to make sure that there's an herbalist in every home again, don't forget to share this episode with your friends so that we can make herbalism hashtag spread like wild flower