Podcast 445: Detoxification with North American Herb & Spice

In this week’s episode, Steven Harkins from North American Herb & Spice joins Martin Pytela to discuss the importance of detoxing. The average person is surrounded by toxins on a daily basis. These toxins come from our environment, and many things you use or consume everyday like food, water, personal care, or household products.  These excess toxins can cause physical and mental health issues like brain fog, digestive and skin issues, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, inflammation, disease, and more.

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MARTIN: Hello, this is Martin Pytela Life Enthusiast podcast. I’m the health coach at life-enthusiast.com. And with me today, I have the distinct pleasure of having Steven Harkin. Harkins. Pardon my pronunciation. Steven… Hi, Steven. Steven is the director of education and culture at North American Herb and Spice, a company I love very much because of their culture, and because of how they present themselves to the world and the kind of products that they bring. Steven.

STEVEN: Thank you.

MARTIN: Yes. And so today we, I am sure that we could probably create 100 different podcasts with North American Herb and Spice, and still not run out of things to talk about, but for a lift off today, I’d like to talk about cleansing, detoxification and why a person would care. There’s a lot of talk about cleansing or detox, but why? Right. If you find yourself dragging, tired, foggy minded, brain not working, not sleeping well. Aching here, there, and everywhere. Those are the signs of inflammation, and inflammation arrives at the tail end of functional deficiency. Which arrives at the tail end of toxicity, or why we want to talk about stuff today. Right?

STEVEN: Yes, exactly. Because what people may not understand is that unlike 50 years ago, unlike any other time in history, you’re being bombarded by just the food additives alone. Over 7,000 food additives that are harmful to the body that we are being exposed to. You can try to avoid it. You can eat healthy, you can eat organic. Guess what? We are still even, Martin and I, we are still doing purges. We’re still detoxing because there’s so many environmental factors before we got even started talking. You and I were discussing the issues of glyphosate, pesticides, nitrates, the issues with our soil, the issues with our air, the water, everything, it’s just, it comes to a…

MARTIN: Yes, a red dye number which, five is it? Six?

STEVEN: Forty-Five, you can’t keep up. But one of the things that really woke me up is when you start researching the other countries that ban many of these food additives, and unfortunately in this country, everything’s allowed.

MARTIN: Yes. Especially in Europe, they have stepped up and they have started banning a lot of things because in Europe, for some reason the corporations are not able to control the government as beautifully as they’ve managed in the United States. I think the invention was the Citizens United decision, which introduced money as free speech into politics. And all of a sudden a lobbyist can spend endless amount of money influencing the legislator, and the legislator will just do as, well you know, where the money comes from.

STEVEN: Yes, exactly. So that’s what we’re up against every day when we make our decisions to eat and drink and live and just go throughout our normal lifestyle. So what are we going to do about it? And if you’re eating healthy, you’re already taking an important first step. But there’s a step that you need to take that goes beyond that, which you can only get from very powerful nutrient sources, very powerful herbs. And that’s really, I’m sure, that’s the heart of what we want to focus on is to tell you, first of all let’s identify, what are those herbs? What are the properties? What if you could get all of them together in a kitchen sink kind of thing, and just chug it down every day and eliminate, purge these toxins out of your body once and for all.

MARTIN: Yes. What if there was an easy button, right. Everybody would love to have one. Well, North American Herb and Spice does go a long way toward finding the easiest solutions.

STEVEN: Yes, absolutely. We have one such product that we definitely want to highlight today and that’s the Total Body Purge. Something that I know you have worked closely with over the years. And I’m sure you’ve seen some results and maybe even some personal some personal results because we don’t just recommend these to other people. We use these ourselves, so it’s very easy to talk about because we actually believe in it and we have felt the difference in our own bodies. I know I have, I like to use it every quarter. So at the change of every season, I usually take, I do a 12 day Total Body Purge cleanse, or really more of a purge, which is a step above. And that’s it’s basically taking an ounce per day of this concoction. We’ll go through the nuts and bolts of it.

STEVEN: And that’s kind of the guess work out for you. We put it all together. You don’t have to think about it. You really just take your ounce every day for 12 days, and start to feel much better and you’ll know because your body is going to be giving these warning signs already that you need to do something. Issues such as the skin, you know, the skin is a huge early warning detection system, the largest organ. And that will tell you, so if you’ve got the blemishes and the irritation, the inflammation, the redness, you need to do something because you probably need to fast and detox. And you know, putting those two together is excellent. But if you’re having bloating you’re having issues with constipation. You’re not having your normal digestion process. Like you’re supposed to huge. Your gut is a huge indicator as well.

STEVEN: You know, sluggish issues with your hormones, thyroid problems, energy, low energy, not enough, not able to make it through the day you get off of work and you’re just ready to go to bed. You have a hard time waking up in the morning to get started and have a hard time to get the energy. Brain fog, not remembering why we went into the kitchen for something you know, these are all signs that just say, Hey, look, you need to do something. You do something quick. And that’s what we’re here for today.

MARTIN: The total body purge bottle. I mean, it tastes actually quite okay to me. I can drink it straight without any hesitation. Is it a 12 ounce bottle?

STEVEN: It’s 12 ounce. Yes. That’s the deal. So.

MARTIN: It’s quite sizeable, it looks like about a size of a beer.

STEVEN: Yes. Yes. There you go. And you know, instead of, you know, inflicting damage or trauma to your liver, you’re actually, that’s one of the lines I like to use with people because they’re like, is it going to taste bad? It says, purge is very intimidating. And I tell them, I say look, if you’ve ever taken a shot of an alcohol substance, which obviously does not taste good and it harms your liver, you can do this. So if you’ve done tequila, you can do Total Body Purge. And it does, in my opinion, taste better. It’s got kind of an apple cider vinegar is probably one of the more dominant flavors. I don’t know if you’re detecting that in the taste. You like sour things.

MARTIN: Yes. This to me was a cross between schnapps and salad dressing.

STEVEN: There you go. <Laugh> Yes, there is a salad dressing because the apple cider vinegar component definitely brings out the balsamic flavor.

MARTIN: So what’s in it actually?

STEVEN: So yes, when we say the kitchen sink, it is nature’s kitchen sink. It’s got apple cider vinegar, and black seed oil. Black seed is huge for helping with the parasite situation, helping to stabilize the gut helping with your heart parameters, blood sugar natural support of your pancreas insulin area. And many other detoxification type of things for your liver and so forth. But the raw greens is a big, big part of this. It’s probably what we’d say is the meat of this. And that is your wild greens that we’re getting things like dandelion, fireweed, burdock, and nettle – all wild. So these are things that are even more powerful than what you could get in the typical grocery store, which is more on the farm side. And then you’ve also got the spices. So we’ve got the cumin, oregano, sage and then you’ve got some further detox support with cilantro for the heavy metals. So this whole thing now, whether you’ve got heavy metal situation, parasites, intestinal flukes, toxins of all kinds, inflammation, bloating, gut problems, constipation, it really checks off all the boxes and that’s the beauty of it. No matter what your situation is, you can only improve by using this total formula. And it really does, it covers multiple layers of support.

MARTIN: Mm-Hmm <affirmative> would you say that it’s quite safe for everyone to hit it straight up with the whole ounce?

STEVEN: Yes. You know, I recently got a question. Definitely the ounce is a great baseline amount for everybody. And if you are, let’s say I’ll throw an extreme scenario out there. You know, if someone’s struggling to keep the weight off, maybe the obesity situation, haven’t done a detox in decades, maybe a fungal overload. It’s not a bad idea to have two ounces. So double up, you might need to grab two bottles and then you can do an ounce in the morning ounce in the evening just to get that double coverage. And when we recently had somebody ask us about for children, you know, could they use it, could they get the benefits? Sometimes babies get constipated and things like this and I actually asked Miss Judy about this. And she told me yes, you can do a half teaspoon to a teaspoon for young children and they can get the benefits. It’s really just a food, all natural.

MARTIN: That’s fantastic. So do the whole bottle, do the two bottles and do that every three, four months. And we’ll be good.

STEVEN: Yes. Yes. Consistency is key, you know, that’s what we preach and you know, if you want to really maximize it, there are some things you can do. Some of these are kind of common sense, but they should be said, and you know, one of them is don’t overeat, don’t eat lots of meat, don’t eat a steak. You know, don’t eat that 40 ounce steak or whatever it is, you know, while you’re trying to detox, you got to keep the pipes open. Yes. So you can flush things down the tubes. And so you know, it’s okay to eat some, it’s not a bad idea to fast, intermittently fast. To drink lots of water and focus on the foods that are easier to digest like your greens, your yogurts, your avocados, your soft foods.

MARTIN: Great. One thing that’s sticking in my head in connection with this purge and cleansing and detoxing is the shikimic acid pathway or the Shikimate. Right. And this as I understand it, it’s getting wrecked by glyphosate, by Roundup. Among other things, but especially most powerfully with that. And of course, if you are not buying organic food, wheat is laced with it. Lentils are laced with it.

STEVEN: That’s right.

MARTIN: What are they called? Chickpeas are laced with it. So it’s, when you’re taking glyphosate, in microscopic amounts. What you’re doing is you’re taking an antibiotic because the stuff is killing the microbes within you.

STEVEN: That’s right. It’s absolutely dreadful for the gut. Yes. It’s, you know, it’s…

MARTIN: And of course, once you get leaky gut, you get leaky barriers. That means your liver gets hit and then your blood brain barrier gets hit. So this, the effect is so profound. And the fact that the chemical companies are getting away with telling you that, well, it doesn’t affect human cells. And you pee it out in the same amount that it comes in, as if nothing happened between here and the bottom.

STEVEN: Well, you may be familiar with the schedule. I mean, the study that came out that showed that 80% of the people in the study in their urine, they’re finding this glyphosate stuff. And so even if you are consuming strictly organic food, which if you’re eating out, I’m just going to say that’s impossible. But if you’re eating organic food, you can still get some residues, because it create contaminates everything so easily. It can be in the rain water and come down it’s soil runoff and all that. So you just have to assume you’re getting exposed to some glyphosate and be aware of that and then have a detox strategy, like what we’re talking about here.

MARTIN: Well, I think we could up the game with the North American Herb and Spice Pine Power, or is it called that or some other…?

STEVEN: Pine Power? Yes. That’s the name of it. And you know, that’s the pine needle and the spruce as well. And Yes, so this is something that we are really believers in and that’s the tree medicines. The pine and the spruce, especially they, you know, you think about it, they’re an evergreen tree. They last all year round. They’re very hardy. And so they make the user very hardy as well. They have strong immune systems, strong skin, and they can detoxify as needed. The pine needle has this compound. That’s called shikimic acid acid. It’s a funny name, but what most people may not know is, it’s already being used in drugs. And in fact, shikimic acid has a lot of documented antiviral properties and it’s being used in Tamiflu. It’s one of the precursors.

STEVEN: Now they add all the extra chemicals and stuff to it, but it’s in a very top selling cold and flu type drug. Now you can get it in the whole food form in pine and not have all that extra mess with it, but you definitely should look up. Some of of the studies are beyond what, I could even get in trouble for saying, but you know, there’s a connection in studies. If you Google COVID and you Google shikimic acid or pine needle, you will be amazed at some of the attributes, the beneficial ones to keep you protected. Right. You know, even dandelion they had a study about potentially blocking the receptor, blocking the spike proteins. If you know, I’m sure you know what spike proteins are, if you’ve been around for the past two years. And that’s not a good thing, you don’t want that attaching to your body and causing a virus. But the dandelion has been shown to help mess up that ability to attach to the receptor and thereby replicate. And so does the pine needle extract.

MARTIN: So we have this one two punch where we are able to do the body purge in detox and strengthen, and then the pine needle in the uplift into strengthening and supporting the immune system.

STEVEN: Yes. And there’s one other attribute about shikimic acid that your listeners should be aware of. And that is, we’re seeing a rise in – it might be controversial to say, to speculate on why – But the truth is, the facts on the ground, we’re seeing a rise in blood clots in many people and even young people such as myself. And why that’s happening? Well, we’ll let you decide. But if you want to be proactive with that, the shikimic acid has natural anticoagulant properties. And that’s why we really also are recommending it for people who are wanting to protect their blood flow. So highly recommend that for the health of your heart. We know heart issues, heart disease is still a number one problem in here. So it’s one of the most valuable things you can do to shore up along with the detox.

MARTIN: Right on. What more could one want? Right? Steven. So I see behind you now a cat and a lady.

STEVEN: Yes. Let me introduce, let me introduce my new guest. So this is Ms. Judy Gray, the founder of North American Herb and Spice right here in this chair. And this is our beloved companion Houdini, and also our mascot. He has his own pet line now, by the way. So he’s a very important figure in the company as well. He sits at all of our meetings.

MARTIN: All right. Great. Well, okay. So thank you very much for talking to me today about the Total Body Purge and about the Pine Power. Both of them are liquids. They are available at Life Enthusiast, and I am very keen on recommending these because in these days and times with challenged immune systems, I cannot imagine a better combination than clearing out the gunk and supporting the better function.

STEVEN: Absolutely. Thank you. And, the beauty of this formula is you don’t have to go out and buy five or six different things. It’s all put in there for you. You got the peace, you got the convenience one stop shop, just get two products. You don’t need anything else.

MARTIN: Great. All right. This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast podcast. And for North American Herb & Spice, you can find us at life-enthusiast.com and you can reach us by phone at 866-543-3388. Thank you.

Author: Life Enthusiast