140 – Stimulating Herbs for Fatigue: When More Energy isn’t the Answer

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello. Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

I am in the car park.

There's lots of roadworks near me.

I just couldn't face driving all the way home

and doing this in the herb shed.

So I'm doing it in a car park.

But that's fine.

I hope you're all well.

I just had three blissful days teaching another practical medicine making intensive.

So this is the three day courses I teach where we just do, we just do like fun stuff the

entire weekend, like making lavender oil, making glycerites, doing as a harvesting,

making tinctures and vinegars and it's just.

Yeah, it always attracts like a massive group of babes and not going to lie, don't have much

of a social life since having a child.

So it's just so nice to have people like come and stay and it's just.

Yeah, so it was really, really nice.

I've realised my throat is a little bit tender

from teaching all weekend and talking a lot.

So forgive me if this episode's not as,

yeah, nice to listen to.

I don't know, some people like a husky voice,

don't they?

But yeah, it was really, really fun.

I'm just gonna dive straight in.

So I promised you this series about fatigue

and I am like dedicated to that.

So today's episod,

Stimulating Herbs for Fatigue and I've subtitled it like When More Energy Isn't the

Answer.

Because I think just to dive straight in when

the body is really, really tired,

we,

you know, it, it makes complete sense that we reach for like external sources of energy

because we're kind of struggling.

So maybe we crave like carbohydrate foods or

like more sugary foods because we're craving that energy.

But we will also often go to stimulants.

And stimulants isn't a generic category.

Right.

Like there's a really broad spectrum.

So one person stimulant might be a nice big cup of coffee.

And for some people that could make them feel jittery and kind of unwell and lightheaded.

And for other people it could just like be barely touch the sides in terms of relieving

that kind of wake up morning fatigue.

And I hope you've listened to the previous episodes in this series where I've talked

about some of the signs of depletion and also some of the causes of fatigue and my sort of,

like, general approach.

So this is just kind of like another layer to that.

So please listen to those for more of the kind of.

Yeah, basic things.

So, yeah, so stimulants, like, I have just ******* been there so much where we feel like

we cannot stop and we cannot rest.

And so when we maybe seek advice and the advice from other people around us is to stop

and slow down,

obviously that can be a little bit triggering,

but in hindsight, I wish I'd listened to a bit of that wisdom.

Like, but for example, when my old best friend had, like, cancer in prison, for example, and

I also had lots of chronic health issues of my ribs, which is like, long before my clinical

training stuff,

everyone was just like, you just need to rest.

Like, you need to stop doing these prison

visits.

And at the time I was so sort of obsessed

with, like, I cannot let my friend down that I wouldn't rest.

And I felt.

Feel like it delayed my recovery so long

because I just didn't give my body that kind of parasympathetic time that it needed.

You know, parasympathetic nervous system state is where we're able to rest and digest and

feel safe and calmer and more.

I hate the word regulated, but you know what I mean?

Like, we feel more.

Yeah, just kind of like peaceful or content or

something.

And it just gives our body a chance to digest

our food better and repair tissues, things like this.

So I think the answer is always the other stuff that I talked about in the episode, like

the.

Yeah, the rest.

The nutrition, you know, good nourishing

herbs, nerve tonics.

But sometimes we do just have to kind of survive a situation and maybe rest is

impossible.

You know, like, after a bereavement, there's

like shitloads of things to do.

Clearing out someone's house, organising the funeral and like, you're in this kind of fight

or flight response, like, heavily for a long time.

So it's like sometimes we might need to draw on stimulants, but I guess this episode is

about kind of some of the nuances and the dangers of that.

So a challenge with stimulants is they can really mask our actual reality of how we're

feeling, especially if we're having very strong stimulants or like very strong herbal

type stimulants like ashwagandha or the ginsengs or rhodiola, like all of these very

strong herbs that kind of stimulate the nervous system and other systems of the body.

It can give us a kind of like, false energy that will then enable us to keep going, which

sometimes we really need, but it will can also enable us to just burn out harder because

we've sort of unsustainably worked with herbs.

And I'm like, very guilty of this.

Like, I think I got through those kind of pre

baby Calais years of going to France like most months for like four years.

And I probably.

I mean, I wasn't dependent that much on

stimulants, but, like, I think I supported my immune system so much.

Like, my nutrition was on point.

I worked with all these like nutritive tonics

and I think I kind of like maintained something that was fundamentally unsustainable

through herbs.

And I think a lot of herbalists do this and I think we are then at risk of burnout because

we've somehow managed to delay the inevitable for long enough.

But yeah, when someone is in that kind of place where we are dependent on stimulants for

energy, we can be masking something that's a bit more serious and needs more significant

attention.

So that's always my worry.

It's like,

how much is someone in touch with like, their actual state and how they're feeling and how

much of that is masked by,

yeah, like, like a caffeine addiction, for example.

I'm not like, dissing coffee.

Like, coffee is full of ******* antioxidants.

Like, it's actually wonderful herbal medicine.

But yeah, it does also have this stimulating

effect on the body, which can lead to states of depletion.

So we just need to be a bit careful.

But would I have got through the last two

years after having a baby without coffee? I don't think so.

I think I've just genuinely needed it because of the sleep deprivation, especially the first

10 months of breastfeeding.

Like, it's really hard.

So, yeah, I'm not dissing coffee.

Fantastic source of antioxidants.

I'm more worried about, like, more of the kind

of like super stimulating herbs that kind of get bandied around.

So a lot of these herbs that are more stimulating, like ashwagandha, Siberian

ginseng, Korean ginseng,

rhodiola, like these kind of like.

Often these herbs are taken out of traditional

context and that's where they become a bit dangerous because they start to get marketed

within capitalism as kind of like solutions.

It's kind of like, you know, you get these fancy coffee alternative blends and sometimes

they're like lovely mushrooms.

I mean, even some mushrooms can be too

stimulating, but often they're really strong herbs.

And I'M like,

people are taking this drink as an, as an alternative because they don't want to use

caffeine anymore and they're just like, their adrenals are getting like,

stimulated so much that I'm just like, oh, God.

But anyway, so a lot of these herbs have very traditional uses for specific things, but

they're largely supportive for people that are in that kind of much deeper fatigue state or

like convalescence from chronic illness.

So there is.

We had a session yesterday about harvesting

nettle seed.

And nettle seed is also a kind of stimulating adaptogen that can kind of, yeah, help with

energy and focus.

It has all sorts of like essential fatty acids

and different things.

But I was saying that like, Nicole now takes making nettle seed.

I would probably get some sort of unnecessary buzz off it in the sense of like, having too

much energy because I have a lot of energy as a person.

But chronic illness, Nicole, when I was like, really not coping with like, the demands on

me, like how the do I maintain concentration,

like through.

I used to work for this thing called corporate

watch and it was like loads of computer work, loads of reading and research and like, just

couldn't do it without that extra help.

So it's like nettle seeds in a bit of soy yoghurt back then was like, very nourish.

Would kind of lift my baseline to something much more functional to kind of survive in

capitalism and keep,

you know, the bills paid and all this ****.

But now I kind of don't really need that extra

stimulation.

Does that make sense?

Um, I mean, I've just said how much I need coffee, but I just have one or two a day

anyway,

so. Yeah, so anyway, a lot of the more stimulating herbs are really for people in

this kind of like much more depleted state.

And sometimes we are more in a kind of like

extreme fatigue or like trauma shutdown response.

So a lot of trauma stuff comes with like a lot of activation, right?

Panic attacks, hyper vigilance, anxiety,

like all of these are like high energy states,

but we don't always think about like the, the kind of aftermath of that, which is like low

energy states, which is like depletion and exhaustion and fatigue and actually an

inability to muster that ******* cortisol to wake us up in the morning, you know, so people

need like more and more sleep.

Not feeling refreshed after sleep,

you know, having very little energy in terms of like just down to the mitochondria in the

cells, like just not being able to kind of like start the engine, if that makes sense.

And in those contexts, stimulants might be incredibly ******* helpful.

Oh, the complexity of herbalism.

But the challenge is in that state is if

someone has a lot of kind of like activation underneath, so they have a lot of fight or

flight that's kind of masked by fatigue, then we're in a kind of danger zone in terms of

kind of prescribing or recommending herbs because it is quite challenging because

someone might be very fatigued,

but then they might have a herb like rhodiola for example, and it just still might be too

stimulating.

So everyone is different, everyone's

expression of fatigue is different.

And I put a little disclaimer on the podcast show notes, but I did forget in the last

episode,

annoyingly it was like the top of my crib, like bullet point notes for these episodes.

But it was to just.

I don't want to scare anyone but like fatigue can be a symptom of like various like serious

chronic illnesses, things like cancer for example.

So I always recommend going to the doctor, getting your bloods done, like you know, just

to, just to kind of, you know, just be aware that there's like other drivers of fatigue,

especially if it just kind of comes out of nowhere rather than this kind of like long

term exhaustion plateau.

But anyway, so just, yeah, just cover your bases,

get to your doctor if you can get that screened.

Okay.

So yeah, so again there's this real challenge

with all the nuance of herbalism and just to kind of recap that.

So it's like stimulating.

Herbs may be appropriate in states of

exhaustion and fatigue.

And like long term chronic illness, they might

not be appropriate where someone has a lot of activation and energy in their system, like

fight or flight,

kind of that sympathetic dominance.

The challenges of working with stimulants can

also be that we get normalised to the effect of something and we think,

I've had a cup of coffee every day for 20 years,

I'm fine.

And then our sleep goes weird and actually because we change, because our sensitivity

changes, because our nutritional intake and absorption goes up and down, because our, you

know, ******* thyroid and all the things like relate to patterns of chronic stress, like our

tolerance to things can change.

So it might be, you could tolerate coffee once upon a time,

but now it is actually the sneaky ****** that's affecting your sleep and you don't even

realise it because you're completely normalised to it.

And that's where we have to kind of become detectives in like one to one herbal work of

kind of like what impact is this Stimulant having on you.

Okay,

so I totally understand that some people are in situations where they just need that

energetic help.

So if we're going to work with these stimulating herbs, how can we do that as

safely as possible?

And I think for me, it's about not being dependent on them as a crutch, but doing all

the ******* basics.

Working with herbs so that you can sleep well

and get your sleep cycles as nourishing and restorative as possible.

Working with nutrition so that you're eating well, so that you're working with digestive

herbs so that you can digest energy from your food, access that nourishment.

Working with, you know,

stimulate.

Not. Sorry, working with kind of relaxant

nerve ions and nerve tonics so that you can kind of be repairing and rebuilding and almost

preventing burnout in lots of cases by nourishing the nervous system.

So once you've got all those basics covered, which I talked about in the previous episode,

and you're still just needing that kind of, like,

survival stuff, then I might work with a stimulating herb.

So, for example,

I guess content warning here, when one of my best friends, Taylor, who died in prison, they

were in a coma once after an overdose, while they were in two comas.

But the first coma, I was in London in a hotel, visiting them every day in hospital.

And it was horrific.

It was so stressful.

I would just be panicking.

They were going to die every day.

I'd have to interact with these ******* prison officers that were like ******* handcuffed to

them in the hospital.

It was just absolute ******* hell.

And my friend Rashika, who I had an episode with from Hedgehubs, who's in London,

absolutely amazing herbalist, she sent me a decoction with all the ******* ginsengs in.

And I took it for like two weeks while I was in the hospital.

And then I stopped taking it.

So I didn't have those stimulating herbs for

months on end.

I had them to get me through a crisis that I

really ******* needed that extra support.

And I'm so grateful to those herbs.

Like, I think it was licorice and Siberian

ginseng.

Was it any something else?

I can't remember.

Sorry, it was such a long time ago.

But, you know, it might be that,

yeah, you have a sort of personal crisis and you just are desperate and you just need those

herbs.

But just having them for a short amount of

time as possible so that they don't have this kind of harmful overstimulation of your system

for too long, I think is really powerful.

And Again, I hate to say it, but everyone's really different.

I am like a very high energy person.

So that is a very different constitution to someone with much slower metabolism and much

more like sort of fatigue.

Does that make sense?

So we're all very different and that's why herbalism is wonderful because we're all,

yeah, super unique and every herb is different.

But yeah,

I guess it's kind of just always coming back to this thing of like, what does my body

actually need rather than like, what do I need to do to remain kind of productive.

And I know there's like a lot of ******* privilege in that question in the sense of

like,

if you are a sole carer to children, you don't get a ******* chance to really stop.

You know, if you're a sole carer for parents, if you,

you know, are trying to pay the bills, like you don't always have the luxury of *******

stopping.

Right?

But I think there is some wiggle room there of what can you control?

And is there a way to like,

you know, attend to your body kind of the best that you can, if that makes sense.

Whether that's allowing rest somehow allowing yourself to go to bed an hour earlier so that

you get more nourishing sleep?

Yeah.

So there is a kind of other category of nervines called stimulating nervines, which I

have taught,

have, have taught, I teach a whole module about in the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic

stress course.

And these are kind of different.

So they are still nervines.

So they have their herbs with an affinity for

the nervous system.

And they're not herbs that I would like, quote unquote say are like relaxing,

but they're more kind of uplifting and strengthening.

And I've got a whole episode about them, so I'll put that in the show notes.

But I want to kind of differentiate between.

There's a ******* middle ground, right? It doesn't have to be relaxing nervine versus

like hardcore, like ginseng, rhodiola, stimulant.

Like there is something in the middle.

And some of these stimulating nervines are

******* beautiful and fantastic.

So the ones that I talk about in the PTSD course include rosemary,

hyssop, sage and thyme.

And all of these herbs interestingly have different actions, but kind of similar actions

so they can be calming.

And again, everyone's ******* different.

But they are also sort of more uplifting, I would say, than other herbs.

And again, it would be a really, really long episode and sat in a car, do you know what I

mean? Maybe a long episode to go into all of their

qualities and properties and everything.

And I think I talk about that more in the Stimulating Nervines podcast.

But they all have, like, similar actions in that they are circulatory stimulants in terms

of getting blood flow to the brain and other places, but notably the brain.

So they're often herbs that are really fantastic for, like, concentration and memory.

Like, rosemary has, like, traditionally been used as, like, a kind of herb to support

people who are, like, studying, for example.

Or it's also a herb with a traditional use for

grief because,

again, it kind of, like, triggers memory.

And I think sometimes, yeah,

someone might have a tendency of that kind of brain fog struggle, and they actually need,

like, a bit of blood flow to the brain.

And there's lots of ways to do that.

Maybe it's doing ******* yoga or going for a ******* walk.

Do you know what I mean? If that is possible for your body.

But for other people, they might just need that little extra bit of help.

So a herb like rosemary can help with that, but isn't going to lead to, like, the same

kind of hardcore adrenal kind of depletion as, like, a stronger herb would.

All of these herbs also are kind of full of antioxidants that are quite sort of

neuroprotective for the brain and the nervous system.

And they're also quite kind of antispasmodic and relaxant.

And I think sometimes there's like, a really interesting connection between, like, fatigue

depletion and, like, tension and, like, the amount of energy that the body uses to feel

tense, to feel alert and on guard and hyper vigilant is really exhausting for the body.

And I think these herbs have that kind of, like, yeah, antispasmodic relaxant action,

which is really nice, especially for, like, the neck and the upper back,

which is, like, often if you're doing especially a lot of, like, computer work or,

like, heavy brain stuff, it's like, like, yeah, these herbs are really fantastic for

that.

Again, going on a whole micro, like, side

rant, which happened a lot during this course this weekend.

These herbs also have kind of, like, broad spectrum, like, antimicrobial actions, and

they're sort of supportive of the gut flora in all sorts of different ways.

But who knows? Like, I think there's massive connections

between what's going on in the guts and levels of fatigue and bacterial overgrowth or fungal

overgrowth.

Like, all of these things are super connected.

And maybe these stimulating nervines are

actually just helpful because they help address this kind of dysbiosis in the guts.

Do you know what I mean?

And they're also.

All of them are like respiratory decongestants

and relaxants.

Like if people have like a tight,

a tight chest, tight cough, if that makes sense.

So, yeah.

So with working with these nervines, I find

they are much more gentle and skilful at supporting someone to get out of a kind of

shutdown state.

Like when we are in that sort of shutdown kind of heavy fatigue state,

there's basically two strategies that get.

Get people out of that.

One is like hardcore sympathetic activation.

So a lot of stress.

So I was like, really in this state after my friend Taylor died and all the kind of like

initial aftermath had happened, like the funeral, all of this stuff.

Then I spent like, I think a month where I just didn't want to get out bed and I can't

remember what happened.

They were like some other horrible thing to

another friend in prison.

And it just put me in such extreme fight or flight that, that kind of adrenaline.

It was like a kind of.

Of jump start.

Do you know what I mean?

And then I was kind of out of that state.

And that's very different to fatigue.

That's driven by all these other factors that I talked about in the other episodes.

But the other way people can get out of this shutdown state is basically gentleness.

It's just kind of not hardcore stimulation, but gentle, gentle.

Gentle like not pushing yourself out of fatigue, but just,

you know, kind of really gentle, sort of strategic pacing almost.

And I think think integrating some of these stimulating nervines can kind of feed into

that kind of gentleness of, you know, maybe you have like one cup of rosemary tea in the

morning that's, you know, very weak.

Like rosemary is a very strong herb.

It can cause headaches.

And some people that have already got enough blood in their head, like me, but for others,

it can just really help with that kind of uplift and it might be sort of more.

More effective.

I don't want.

I'm not going to make the claim that it's more effective than coffee, but it's different to

coffee.

Right?

Like it will.

Yeah, just kind of help with that gent.

Gentle stimulation in the body.

So, yeah, I think that was the main thing I

wanted to say is that, yeah, we just have to be really cautious when reaching for strong,

stimulating herbs and that if we really want to restore energy in the body, we need to just

do all the boring ******* basics as they say it Commonwealth herbs.

Well, I don't think they swear, but they talk about be a boring herbalist.

You know, it is the boring things, it is the sleep, it is the nutrition, it is the gentle

movement.

All of these things are absolute foundations and I think, think people who are experiencing

trauma or have experienced trauma, you know, there is like a whole other layer there which

is a nervous system and we have to tend to that pretty much before, not before, but,

like, while we are recovering from chronic illness because it's just so interconnected.

Patterns of chronic stress and trauma versus, you know, like gut, bacteria, chronic illness,

immune system activation.

Like, all of the things are super connected

and shameless plug.

But the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress

course does go into all of this.

I talk about nervous system physiology, we look at all the different nervous system

states from fight or flight to shut down to, you know, play.

Like the kind of good ones as well.

Yeah, I talk about all these hubs in depth, their, you know, their safety concerns, how

to, like, work with them in, practise a bit about their kind of histories and their

constituents and things.

There's 32 plant profiles and this course is no one Turned Away flag funds.

So honestly, if you're listening to this being like, like, I don't ******* have the money to

do a course.

I ******* got you, babe.

Like, I want people to do it who don't have

access to funds.

Like, I'm really ******* passionate about

that.

So, yeah, please join the waiting list if you're keen to receive that solidarity code,

to access it for free or there's a 10 discount code that I share as well, that as a thank

you.

And then you can, you know, join the course at a paid rate, if that's possible for you.

And all of that money, like, sustains the solenoid apothecary and all the work I do,

from getting herbal care packages to people around the world books, to prisoners,

group programmes for people experiencing repression, healing from incarceration, all

the things.

So, yeah, please cheque out the course.

I will put a link to the waiting list and the

course in the show notes.

Was there anything else I was going to say? I don't think so, but thank you for listening

and I will be back soon and I'm going to be talking about nerve tonics and, yeah, I know

I've done an episode on nerve tonics before, but we're going to go into them in a little

bit more detail and kind of pair them with like a lot of the drivers of fatigue so that

you can think kind of skillfully about

which one might be really helpful for you, if that makes sense.

Okay, thanks so much for listening thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism

Podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all

the resources from the show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.