MARTIN: Hi everyone. Martin Pytela here for Life Enthusiast Podcast, and today with me Rehmannia Dean Thomas. Rehmannia is the CEO of RDT Herbs, and now Super Tonic,

REHMANNIA: Herbs. <Laugh>

MARTIN: Our Super Tonic Herbs, which is kind of cool. Super tonic, super sonic. So welcome Rehmannia.

MARTIN: What’s kind of neat is that you’re now introducing two more products to the lineup, which already was pretty rich.

REHMANNIA: Thank you. Yeah, there’s more to come too.

MARTIN: Oh, you know, one of the nicest compliments I heard was one of the people who bought all of them. She first bought three as a sample. And then she bought the whole line. And then she said, when I get the products, you can just feel the love that’s gone into building it. The bottles are classy, the labels are meticulous. The product is well made. You can see and feel the energy that’s gone into doing it. Just.

REHMANNIA: Oh my god! I’d love to read that testimonial. <laugh> Maybe if I could use it on my website, <laugh> I could ask her permission.

MARTIN: Well, you can call her. She’s the one that offered her phone number to talk to you.

REHMANNIA: Great. That’s sweet. Thank you. If you’re watching. <Laugh>.

MARTIN: And anyway, let’s do this. Let’s talk about the two new arrivals. What’s your pick?

REHMANNIA: Well, we go back to the first new one, which is Spirit Jing. And then go in chronological order, <laugh>. Spirit Jing is a very unique nutritional powder that’s kind of shake mix. You make a shake out of it, I love nut milks and oat milk and things like that. And to me, just straight up with some of the regular oat milk or nut milk from the grocery is fabulous. Of course, you know, there’s a lot of purists out there who make their own. That’s even better! <Laugh> I’m lazy though, so I go to the store. I know I shouldn’t. But anyway, it’s fantastic! And just in milk, a glass of milk in the morning, it’s essentially an anti-aging and spirit tonic combined, because we have a combination of herbs and superfoods that are targeted over the centuries to anti-aging and spiritual peace and countenance of the spirit.

REHMANNIA: And I put the two together because that’s what we’re seeking. We’re not only seeking longevity, but we must have a peaceful heart too, if we’re going to have true longevity. <Laugh>. Because fear and worry and remorse and all of that is what makes us age, a lot of the time.  And if we put anti-aging herbs in with a strong sense of spiritual empowerment, like you’ve got some reason you’re here. You’ve got some potent reason for being alive and that, it’s good. And of course we all do. This formula can help you sort of express that in your lives. It’s called Spirit Jing, now spirit of course, is a spirit. But jing, is an ancient Chinese word meaning immortal, or it means your reproductive health in your body itself.

REHMANNIA: And it’s an epigenetic energy. We’re passing down jing through generations. If we want to understand the true foundation of our health, we look back at our great-grandparents on both sides, our grandparents and parents. What were they doing? How were they living? What were they eating? What kind of water were they drinking? Were they getting sunlight? All that. Were they working physically and doing these things? And we inherited that. And then we’re gonna pass that on to our progeny. That’s called Jing. This formula is about building up that energy so that we pass it on to new generations. Well, the unique thing about Spirit Jing makes it very different from, particularly all of the protein powders on the market and such, is that it is composed of foods that are called black foods. Black foods are said to tonify Jing or they go directly to Jing.

REHMANNIA: And this happened because a long time ago, the Chinese were studying human physiology, and they looked at the kidneys and saw that they looked like two black beans, <laugh>. And they were down here really deep down in there where it’s dark in the body. And they said, well, what if we eat black food? Maybe it’ll go down there. And so it became a popular pastime, particularly for the elite and sometimes restricted to the elite, to eat black foods. That’s why black rice is called forbidden black rice, because there were times during certain dynasties when the common people were forbidden from having it. It was only taken by the elite because it was considered an anti-aging food. So Spirit Jing is composed of black foods, black rice, black sesame, and black beans. Now, what they do is, there’s a Korean technique that I was so fortunate to discover when I lived in Koreatown in Los Angeles, that where they take these beans and rice and sesame and bake it and grind it down into a sort of a really creamy powder where the flatulence potential is gone from beans and it just tastes so good, and you just can’t believe it.

REHMANNIA: It’s a very popular pastime in Korea to drink these drinks. So I took the three primary black foods. And a lot of these products that I saw, that were already in Korean marketplaces, were usually mixed with a lot of things like white rice, brown rice, kind of like barley like material called koex and barley. But I said, well, what if we just do it all black? And that was the first time that that was done. And so then I added in black maca, black reishi mushroom, that’s the shin part, the spirit part. And albizia flower, which is the dark magnolia flower, is a bit of a misnomer, but it’s referred to as albizia flower, the hard albizia flower. This is a dark flower. And then also schisandra, which is very dark in color, and it’s considered one of the top anti-aging gene foods of all.

REHMANNIA: I combine these in Spirit Jing. It’s a unique product that nothing like it has ever been done. And it is so tasty. I just had some, I get up every morning, I want to get out of bed to have this stuff. I remember the day I invented it. I put this and that and this and that increment, and well, let’s try it. And took a drink and went, whoa! I never changed it a single iota from that first test run I did that day. I’m so proud of this product.

MARTIN: And so you just take what, one or two teaspoons of it? And mix it into the nut milk.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Thanks Martin. This one is more of a whole, powders of bean rice and sesame. So it takes more like a heaping tablespoon of it is what I put in, or round heaping tablespoon into a glass of nut milk, in this case. So most of the other products,

MARTIN: Because it is in a much bigger bag too, right?

REHMANNIA: Yeah. It comes in a one pound bag. So, you would do it like kind of the same increment as you would use like your protein, your daily protein powder mix. And you can mix it with those too, if you’d like. But there’s something about Spirit Jing that just feels so alive. And like that woman mentioned to you, that feeling is there because we have to buy the bean rice and sesame freshly baked and rendered. Because you can’t just have this stuff laying around, like a lot of those protein powders, those products are so pretty much benign that they can be laying around in a warehouse or something for a long time before they’re mixed and used. And I think that, I feel a kind of vital energy from a lot of them, to tell you the truth. But we can’t do that with Spirit Jing. It has to be remain fresh, so we make it in very small batches, fresh. And that’s partly what that woman felt when she had it. You just don’t find really fresh protein and green powder formulas very easily.

MARTIN: Okay. Now, the ingredients are actually quite carby, right? So people who are on a keto diet probably will not be too happy about the level of carbohydrate in this, right?

REHMANNIA: <Laugh> Well, a carbohydrate is a unit of energy, and it burns. That’s what the body uses for energy, so. <Laugh> It depends on whether that carbohydrate is accompanied with nutrition. And so when the carb is burnt, there has to be nutrients involved to burn to true energy, so you don’t wind up at an energy deficit. So empty carbohydrates like sugar, what they do is they cause and they’re basically monosaccharides that cause a burst of energy, but don’t provide any nutrition to back it up. And that’s why in time it doesn’t do you any good. It produces what we call false fire. So, wow, wow. And then later on, whew, man, I got to go eat another sugar bar. You know? But this is different because complex carbohydrates like polysaccharides, very long chain, slow burning nutrient bearing sugars are very important in the diet. So understanding the nature of carbohydrates and like anything, there’s bad and good carbohydrates. <laugh> This is the good stuff. <laugh>.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. So does the word fermentation play into this, or not really?

REHMANNIA: No. Not really. No. Everything is made fresh through a baking process and through a hot water extraction process for the herbs, and then flash dried into a powder. So it’s not, but I am coming out with another product for our next video that will be ferment based <laugh>.

MARTIN: Oh, cool. Yeah. <affirmative> Very good. Okay. So Spirit Jing.  Just in case you didn’t quite get the word, J-i-n-g, Jing.

REHMANNIA: Mm-hmm. Yes.

MARTIN: Is essentially a nutritional day starter energy kickstart. But more than anything, because you’re using the energy with the spiritual,

REHMANNIA: Yeah.

MARTIN: Slant to it, right. It’ll feed us. I mean, I had a bag of it. You sent it to me, when? Some time ago. Probably. <affirmative> Some time ago. And I remember taking it always in the morning and always feeling more centered. More willing and able to take on the world. It’s as if I had an extra guy on my crew.

REHMANNIA: Yeah <Laugh>. That’s a nice way to say it. Well, what I did was I took the bean powders and the jing tonics for anti-aging, and I added in pure extracts of the herbs, all of the herbs that are known in our Daoist lineage, which is 5,000 years old. There are herbs that have been classified to tonify the spirit. And that’s one reason why I love the original Chinese medical pharmacopeia so much is because it was mainly about prevention in those days, but it also was about our spiritual centeredness and empowerment. And I added the top, those herbs are called shin herbs. Shin means your spirit. And I added the top shin herbs into this formula. And I’m really proud of it.

MARTIN: Right on. Okay. So for practical things, this is an essentially a meal replacement, or at least a quick breakfast on the run. It’ll give you plenty of energy. And, try it. It’s a fun product.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. <laugh>. I’ll have it in oatmeal in the morning, mixed into oatmeal, with a little added nut milk and maple syrup and oatmeal, pomegranates, <laugh> But then in the night, you know, when you come home and it’s late in the evening. You’re kind of hungry, but you don’t want to eat. This is a wonderful drink. I actually feel like I sleep better when I have it in the night, late at night, as I don’t fill my stomach full of food.

MARTIN: All right. Spirit Jing it is. And it’ll agree with all the vegetarian ideas.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing animal based in it.

MARTIN: Yeah. No black ant powder, huh?

REHMANNIA: No <laugh>.

MARTIN: Because you could have put the most jing thing into it.

REHMANNIA: The thing is, if you put black ant powder in there, that is so jing, but it would, it would negatively affect the taste. It has a real sour sort of taste.

MARTIN: <laugh> I know. Formic acid straight up.

REHMANNIA: Uh-huh <affirmative>. Yeah. Right, right.

MARTIN: Yeah. Oh, well. Okay, great. So that behind us, I would like to have you talk about this other new product that you made.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Rakta. 

MARTIN: Rakta

REHMANNIA: Rakta is my new,

MARTIN: That’s a curious word because you reached into Sanskrit to name something that’s a Chinese herb, right. <laugh>.

REHMANNIA: That’s a good observation, Martin. It’s because frankly, okay. I was designing a formula to build blood, tonify the blood, because I feel that we need to move toward a vegetarian lifestyle. Not entirely. I actually, in fact, oddly, I kind of agree with the USDA food pyramid where they place meat consumption at about 10 to 20% of your diet, maybe 10 to 15%. That’s about right. But if we move away from heavy meat consumption, we want to make sure, and particularly those of us who choose to be vegan or vegetarian, do run a risk of becoming anemic because red meat is high in a type of iron called heme iron, or its technical name is ferrous iron, and this is the iron that’s very easy for us to assimilate into our bloodstream.

REHMANNIA: And it is one reason why humans have such high amounts of iron in our blood. And why, maybe my theory, that I haven’t proven in any way, but I believe it may be why human females bleed so much heavier than other animals, because of our excessive meat consumption. So the amount of iron we’re getting in our diet, we even have reservoirs in bilirubin that are iron based in our body, like just holding some of that iron. Cause we get so much. But if we go vegan, what happens is our genetics now are conducive to taking this much meat, women have formed a general pattern of monthly menstrual cycles. So now we need to genetically modify and slowly evolve toward vegan species, and we can do that.

REHMANNIA: But we want some help. And again, we have to thank the Ancient Chinese people because they didn’t eat red meat in their society. They considered animals with red blood to be higher on the evolutionary scale, and that they were sacred and they wouldn’t be eaten. And so the Chinese people did run the risk of getting anemic. And they found and classified herbs over the centuries that helped them avoid anemia, particularly the herb dong-quai, another herb, ligusticum. And being primarily a vegetarian who recently started to feel a need to start going back to a little bit of meat, but I really don’t like it when I eat it. I don’t feel good. I don’t like it, and so,

MARTIN: I’d like to just butt in here with the following, even genetically, you know, in my metabolic typing practice. We understand people to have endocrine dominance and the thyroid types do not do well on red meat. Only the adrenal dominant, do okay with the muscle meat, the red meat. And the pituitary, they do actually exceedingly well on the organ meat, which is like their kidney and liver and heart and tongue and stuff like that. And what’s interesting, it’s associated with this protein called purine, P-U-R-I-N-E. and purine is the richest in the red meats.

REHMANNIA: Yes.

MARTIN: But what’s also interesting is that those of us, like yours and mine genetics are quite similar in the sense that we both are the thyroid type. So we do quite okay on vegetarian, and if we are going to eat proteins, it should be fish and maybe some poultry, but not much.

REHMANNIA: That’s what I’m drawn to. 

MARTIN: And what’s interesting, I joined my wife who is the hunter type, like she is totally adrenal dominant, so she needs to eat a lot of red meat. And so I thought, well, lazy Martin, I’m just going to have the beef when she’s cooking something, because what the heck, right? So I would eat it. It took only two years and I started getting gout.

REHMANNIA: <laugh>. Wow. Wow.

MARTIN: So I had to go right back to being a straight vegetarian for a year to flush it out of my system and get rid of it. So anyway, going back, I do need Vitamin B12 because that seems to be the association with energy and a few other things that are related to eating red meat.

REHMANNIA: Yes. Right. Well, that’s why I designed the formula, because more and more people are choosing to move toward vegetarianism. And in your wife’s case, it’s actually sort of in a way, a bit ironic that women generally feel more of a need to eat meat. And that is because of the menstrual cycles that women experience during the fertility years. And that anemia, potential anemia because of menstrual cycles can carry on into postmenopause. And those women will feel they need to eat meat. It’s not the protein they’re craving, it’s actually the iron. And so you’ll find women sometimes at a certain time in the month, wanting, craving a piece of red meat. Well, in my research, and when I wrote my book Raw Chi, I determined that, it’s really like, don’t worry about it.

REHMANNIA: Go ahead and do that. You know, make sure it’s free range, make sure it’s lean, look for the marbleized fats. Avoid that stuff in there. That means that animal is sitting around and being force fed. So we can do it in a way where the animals were treated well and they’re healthy, and women can gauge, based on their own cravings, how much they need. But this formula, Rakta, contains herbs that are known to quote “build blood”, because as I said, the Chinese never ate red meat in their past. So they had to find ways to avoid for their women in particular, to avoid anemia. And unfortunately, they classified these herbs, dong quai, ligusticum. And then herbs that move blood like white peony root and salvia miltiorrhiza. These are really important herbs in our time because, as we move toward a more conscious species <laugh> We are choosing not to harm other beings.

REHMANNIA: But it’s not only that, it’s the environment, the effect of overgrazing particularly the American West, since the 1800s has been disastrous for the land. And so there’s a lot of conscious reasons why we need to be concerned about the degree of the consumption, the amount of the consumption. Well then Rakta can help us make this transition, and avoid anemia. Now, women in reproductive years can develop anemia because of blood loss in the menstrual cycles. And the way to avoid that is through eating food that’s high in sunlight, we call Chi. So living food, how much sunlight is in a raw tomato, right? How much sunlight is in that American cheese on that hamburger bun? Right? <laugh>. And so we look at what kind of Chi, sunlight, are we gathering?

REHMANNIA: And then the peptic enzymes, and it works to break that food down. Our body gets a break. And those enzymes and the food break themselves down. They get into the do duodenum where the nutrients are drawn into the blood as hemoglobin, but then the blood itself also needs iron ions, it infuses new iron ions. That’s important because iron is more difficult to assimilate into the bloodstream cause it takes more flame and more energy. So what happens with women in reproductive years is, if they’re experiencing heavy menstrual cycles, the blood is the carrier of chi. Now the blood may be low in quantity, so as the blood is coursing through the splenic arteries, it may not be, feeding the spleen itself. It’ll keep warm, keep the body warm. So this young girl may experience heavy menstrual bleeding with darker blood, cold hands and feet, lethargy, breaking out around the time of the period, loose stool, all kinds of issues like that.

REHMANNIA: This young woman could take Rakta, as a way of “building her blood in chi.” So it also has herbs that warm the spleen and move the blood. White peony root is very important. It’s a famous herb in helping women avoid cramping in menstrual periods. So this formula, I think, is really, really, really critical. And I’m really proud of it because I want to see us move successfully toward not necessarily a purely vegetarian or vegan race. If you choose that like you and I do, that’s great, but if you feel you need meat, okay. But to be able to start the process of becoming a more conscious species that is less destructive to the environment through the over consumption of meat.

MARTIN: Yeah. Great. Interestingly, that chlorophyll has a molecular structure that’s almost identical to the red blood cell or to the hemoglobin. Except at the center of the molecules sits magnesium, where as the hemoglobin at the center sits the iron.

REHMANNIA: Yes.

MARTIN: So it would follow in my head that eating really rich green things loaded with chlorophyll,

REHMANNIA: Uh-huh <affirmative>

MARTIN: Would be very helpful to build blood, but you also need to come up with this iron. And that’s where these herbs will, in combination with a diet that’s kind of rich in dark and green things. Will probably correct… Which is very common. I have so many clients asking, what can I get to improve my hemoglobin level or iron level? They’re taking iron infusions because they’re,

REHMANNIA: That is what I created Rakta for. I mean, so many people are dealing with many women and many people are asking for ways to get their iron right. The iron from green vegetables are high in iron, but that iron is, is called ferrous ferric iron, and it’s not easily assimilable in the body. Now, the reason why the heme iron from the cow is more assimilable is because the cow eats the grass and the weeds, ruminates all the field. And then it breaks down those green vegetables through about two weeks of digestion through about six stomachs. And that process of all that heat and combustion and rendering finally makes the iron, renders the iron into an easy state for us to metabolize, as we refer to as Ferrous iron or Heme iron. So when we try to eat the green vegetables, we’re not necessarily getting the iron out of them. The human transit time is too quick, and our digestion. That’s where I think herbs like dong quai and ligusticum may function, is in helping the body assimilate Ferrous Iron. Now, I can’t say that as a conclusive statement because the actual research on how dong quai works is still inconclusive, but it just seems to, because the Asian people have been using it for thousands of years effectively.

MARTIN: Yeah. We could easily just say, well, we don’t care that we don’t know how it works, as long as it does work. Not for me, right?

REHMANNIA: <laugh>. Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. I don’t need to know how the combustion engine works exactly, as long as I can drive the car.

REHMANNIA: <laugh> Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: Likewise, here you have, you put it together, you know it delivers, what do I care about the mechanism of action and which atom gets replaced by what atom and what cascade.

REHMANNIA: Right. Well, the ancient people, they used their own intuition to understand what modern science is, proving they were right. They were able to tune in in other ways through their own antenna to the therapeutic value of this stuff and documented it over time. And I trust that ancient wisdom. <Laugh>

MARTIN: Yeah. Works great. All right. So these are the two new arrivals. You can find them at the life-enthusiast.com website and the brand RDT herbs. Or you will find the Rakta in the women’s health section. Well, I don’t know, maybe we should put it under iron as well. And the Spirit Jing. I guess you will find that in the protein concentrates, even though it’s not necessarily because it’s mostly carby, but we’ll put it there.

REHMANNIA: <laugh>.

MARTIN: So, thank you. Thank you Rehmannia, thank you for doing the work you do. It’s just lovely.

REHMANNIA: Oh yeah. Thank you for selling my products. You’re one of the first to feature Rakta. Yeah. So this is great.

MARTIN: Yep. Great. Okay, people, this is Martin, Martin Pytela, at life-enthusiast.com. You can reach me by phone at (866) 543-3388. Thank you.

REHMANNIA: Thank you.