Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this July 10th,
2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
At 4.30, we are going to welcome in Kim Shields from Encourge.
We're also going to have Wither, Laura, and Bethany from Girl Scouts.
We're looking forward to talking with them right now
to our favorite people, Stephen, because you
could train a hinder from family natural foods
are with us.
Thank you so much for being here, you too.
Happy to be here.
We have a lot to talk about today, I see,
as we have our audience, of course, can't, because this is
audio, so I don't know why I'm describing this,
but we've got some great stuff lined up here today.
And a lot of different fun things we're going to get into.
Where do you want to start?
What's happening right now, Katrina?
What's happening right now?
So you're in your car, probably, or maybe you
are deciding where you want to go.
Well, you should be going to Red Sand Beach right now,
because at 4.30, we are presenting on an herb talk.
We're going to be talking with you about all sorts of things
that you can find in your backyard that can help you
with your health.
So 4.30, Red Sand Beach.
Yep, it's nice herb walk, nice day, no rain.
Gorgeous day.
Yeah, get to just walk around, and we'll
talk about what's growing.
I imagine that some people are hearing this and may not
know what an herb walk is.
Can we describe a little bit of what you guys will be doing
on the walk?
Yeah, so it's mostly going to be led by Jamie, our lovely co-worker
and Stephen, and they both have lots of knowledge in herbs.
I'll maybe dabble, and if there's other staff members,
we might dabble and join in a little bit, too.
We're all a little bit of backyard herbalists, I guess
you can say, and some more than others,
as I was walking today with my dog out in my backyard.
It's going to be like that, actually,
but I will be not talking to my dog about herbs.
It would be like us talking with everybody about herbs.
So we'll be finding different herbs that are growing,
that are commonly growing.
Naturally.
A lot of these would be considered by most people
be weeds, and a lot of them, you probably
stepped on, walked over, pulled out, ideally not
sprayed with chemicals.
But a lot of these things that we've just ignored that are
in our yards, or in the woods, or in our parks,
are medicinal herbs.
And they have so many benefits.
And they're available, you can use them.
And oftentimes there's stuff that's
growing that's right out there.
If you happen to get a bee sting, what do you grab?
Oh, well, here it is, right on the ground, yeah.
So like, plantain is a great example,
just to give a person an example of what something we might do.
So it's even just cute, it really beautifully right there.
So yeah, you're walking, and all of a sudden you get a bee sting.
You're probably walking by something that can help you.
We often think of these herbs have so many health properties.
So plantain is one kind of hard to explain on the radio,
but it's a very flat leaf.
We'll explain it to you, hopefully, we'll
be seeing them out there.
Swerve your car carefully.
Yes.
To write sand, be it should be there.
But plantain would be one that you could apply to a bee sting.
You have to activate it a little bit, get a little bit wet,
but you could apply it to a bee sting.
And it is really soothing.
So that is a common one that if somebody gets stung at my house,
that's something we'll put on right away,
is we'll make a little poultice out of it, pop it on.
So those are things that we're going to teach people.
Hey, this happened.
This is how it can help you, or how to harvest it.
What parts to harvest?
Just looking for herbs.
And it's going to be fun.
It's nice out.
Yeah, we've never done this before.
We've never actually done this much of an off-site talk.
I think our dad had done a couple.
I'm vaguely remembering some years and years ago.
But in recent history, in the last, let's call it 20 years,
probably, we haven't done anything this far off-site.
It'll be just kind of fun.
We're trying it out.
And we're encouraging folks to come join us
and just enjoy it.
It's said, like we said, Red Sand's Beach,
which is Lake Wazeachia for people who don't know exactly
what we're talking about.
So Lake Wazeachia has two sides, one side.
One of the beaches has White Sand.
One of the beaches has Red Sand.
The Red Sand's is the one where the water ski show
is takes place.
It's on, I think, the south side.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's over in that direction anyway.
So look it up, or you probably already know where it is,
drive on over.
And we'll be starting that at 4.30, like you're treating us.
Yeah, we, the relationship between WFHR
and family and natural foods has gone
on longer than any of us have been here.
Yeah, sure.
And we love supporting you guys.
And I've been talking about this,
and we're encouraging people to check it out.
One of the things I heard from one of our listeners
was interesting.
One, Steven, listeners said, they used to do stuff like this,
and talking about your dad and some of that and everything.
And I thought that was an interesting note
because I didn't know that until they mentioned it.
And another thing that came up was,
I remember when I first moved to this area,
I had a couple of friends that would be able to be able
to point to a tree and name it.
Yeah.
And almost any leaf on the ground and being able to.
And the listener brought up, I don't know if kids
are doing that anymore, if kids are learning that stuff.
I feel like this is almost a blind spot
that we've kind of had as we pushed more and more on kids
and they have to learn more and more.
These are some of the things that we miss out on.
Why not catch up on that?
And even re-learn some of these things.
There's this village in Costa Rica
that lives completely off the land.
They everything, their food, their health,
everything that they do from the land.
And I don't know how feasible that is
for some of us in the states here and everything,
but the idea of being able to pull from the earth,
the idea of being able to pull from the resources
that are given to us on this planet,
never seems like a bad idea to me.
Obviously within reason, we don't want to deplete
the sources or anything like that.
But to be able to do that,
I think is one of the coolest things a human being can do.
This is a perfect example of what you brought up
about the poise and ivy and how many times in nature,
the cure is right next to the plant that gave it to you
or something like that.
Yeah, it's very true.
Nature looks out for us.
Nature's got nature smarter than us even.
Oh, really smart of us.
And this is a great opportunity to be able
to experience some of that stuff
and a little bit of a throwback for family
and retrofoods long time members and everything.
It'll be fun.
So you know, it's at 4.30 at RedSans Lake, with Zecha.
And we're just gonna, we're gonna see how it goes.
If it's something that people like,
we might try to do it more seasonally with each season
because there's different herbs that grow more abundantly.
And you can see them in different stages.
So this is kind of just a dabble
and we're all excited to get outside too.
So come join us.
I know one of the other things that we were gonna dive into,
we'll touch on those details for the herb walk
before we wrap up today.
Cause we wanna make sure that you're getting out there
as given the time that we're doing this and everything.
But one of the topics that I think,
I know I've heard from the audience
and I know even our staff here,
we've appreciated you guys discussing,
is digestive help.
And how that used to be a topic
that is one of those ones that you didn't ask a whole lot
about and you talked a little bit in the hushed voice.
It was one of these kind of things.
So we've really gotten away from that as a society.
It's too important not to talk about.
You guys do a great job bringing in guests
to talk about this subject.
And love any time that we can kind of dive into this one.
Absolutely.
So it's the sun season
and we often think of aloe vera for our skin, right?
So we think of it like I have a burn
and it's really healing for our sunburn.
And it's true, it's amazing.
It's really cooling.
But we don't think of aloe vera to take internally.
And now you're not taking the same gel
that you're putting on your body.
You're using a different property of the plant
and a different kind of the plant.
And the aloe is amazingly healing
just like it is for your skin
for all parts that it touches in your body.
So from your mouth all the way down to your colon,
it's extremely helpful.
So that's one of Stephens
and my favorite digestive products
that we wanted to spend a little bit of time on.
Just talking about how healing and amazing it is.
A lot of people use it for acid reflex, right?
So think about your skin, it's burning, right?
But your esophagus is burning from the acid.
It helps calm that fire.
Yeah, it's very cooling.
And it's actually the good season to talk about aloe vera.
Just like you'd use it for a sunburn from the heat to the sun.
The heat that we're surrounded by wouldn't
especially when we're outside
or not in air conditioning.
In the summertime, it's very heating to our whole body.
So like an Ayurvedic medicine or Chinese medicine,
they would talk about these things
about the seasonality and the heat.
And aloe vera is a very cooling and soothing herb.
And it's really perfect for this season.
Not just for a small sunburn on your skin,
but for your whole body.
So taking it internally like Katrina Sane.
And this is really a product we sell quite a bit of.
I'm always surprised by how much,
especially the liquid aloe vera juice.
Same aloe vera plant like Katrina
saying that you'd put on a sunburn.
But in the gel form, they usually
add something to thicken it.
And this is just the pure juice.
I think on the front, what does it say?
99.7% aloe vera juice.
So what is close to 100% is you get.
And the product we sell, which is, I think,
sort of a testament to the quality of it
and the effectiveness of it, is called Farm Aloe.
And we've sold this, I think, for like three generations.
Yeah, this is actually super fun.
I kind of father used to buy it from the same gentleman.
My dad bought it from the same gentleman.
He's his company's based out of Wisconsin.
Al was growing, I think, in Arizona or Nevada.
Somewhere like that where it grows, obviously.
But he's owned a couple of different aloe vera companies.
And he was really a pioneer.
And this guy is always amazing when
he comes and delivers stuff at our store.
He carries these heavy aloe vera boxes.
Last time I asked him his age, I don't know how old he is now.
But he was in those like, was he in his, like, Lee?
He was in his late 70s then.
Yeah, I was in the say even 80s.
But anyways, he's probably in his 80s now anyways.
But the fact that he's driving around the state delivering
an aloe vera and creating the best product,
his thing was just like, let's not dilute the product.
So the thing is you can buy an aloe vera,
including an aloe vera gel everywhere.
But aloe vera products tend to, in the market,
they tend to often get diluted.
So the companies are watering them down.
Like literally adding water to aloe vera,
which already has plenty of water in it
that's kind of its natural component.
So his mission was always just to tell people, hey,
all we need to do is not dilute the aloe.
And it will work great for us.
So he would do side by side tests.
He'd send out kind of pay for these labs to test the products
and he'd find that there's very few products on the market
that weren't diluted.
And his, of course, isn't any tests that every year
to kind of verify that.
But, yeah, this is a great product.
We have pet products made with aloe.
We have hair care products made with aloe.
And really the magic is taking it internally.
It's got benefits for everything from diabetes
to immune system boosting, digestive health, obviously.
I think my favorite bonus is that it helps with,
so if you're taking aloe vera regularly,
it helps absorb the nutrients that you're consuming.
So maybe that's the food that you're eating.
Or maybe you're taking your supplements,
your multivitamin, it'll help absorb those nutrients,
like 10 fold.
It's amazing.
So even if you don't have digestive issues,
like anybody can take this and get benefits from it.
And again, a lot of, a lot starts in our gut.
Like, you know, if we're stressed,
it is actually starting more in your gut
and there becomes this like imbalance.
And so our gut health is so important.
It's something that's, it's our gut brain connection we have.
Then there's the like, the nervous stomach,
there's so many things we can do for eye digestive health.
So it's like if we can build our digestive system up,
whether or not you have digestive issues,
you might get more benefits from it later
because you're keeping a healthy gut.
We've talked before about keeping a healthy immunity.
It all starts in the gut.
So aloe is a great base for anybody.
Almost like it's not a multivitamin, right?
But like the multivitamin of digestive,
like the baseline helps everybody good for so many things.
But we're going to talk about a couple of other things
that are so important for digestive health.
One of which is probiotics,
because I think that's what,
that's a lot of people think of probiotics.
Sure.
And they're very important.
Do you want to explain the Dr. O'Hara's?
Because I feel like it has such a cool story,
kind of like the aloe vera.
Yeah, Dr. O'Hara's is so cool.
So there's a lot of probiotic products on the market.
A lot of them are good,
but there's really nothing that's quite like
the Dr. O'Hara's probiotic.
And I don't mean that in like,
it's a new product on TikTok and it's like, whatever.
It's like, no, this is like old school.
This guy, Dr. O'Hara,
has been like a probiotic researcher for,
I don't know, 30 years or something.
We've been selling this on our shelves,
probably for 20, I don't know, maybe longer even.
But you know, 20 years or more,
it really has never changed.
The box really hasn't changed.
And I love that when like,
just like a good product just stays consistent
because like, why change something that's already grown?
And what's unique about this product is
it contains all three elements
of the probiotic ecosystem, I'm going to call it.
So you know, obviously it has probiotics in it.
And then it has something called prebiotics,
which people are learning more and more
and asking us about prebiotics are basically
the food that probiotics eat in our gut.
So to keep probiotics alive in your digestive system,
you need to give them the right foods.
And they'll eat all sorts of things,
but given the best foods,
they'll thrive even better.
And then the third thing that this one has,
which is really what's unique is as postbiotics.
So we have the probiotics, the prebiotics,
and the postbiotics.
And the postbiotics are the metabolites.
It's like the ecosystem that the probiotics create
after eating prebiotics for enough time.
And the only way you get that is really with time.
And Dr. O'Harris is unique in that they take the patients
to make these formulas.
It takes three to five years to make them.
I don't think you'll see that in any other product
on the market is that they create an ecosystem.
Basically what Dr. O'Harris did is very scientific, really.
He simulated a digestive system.
He got the same pH, same temperature,
put in the best foods.
And a lot of these are just foods you could eat,
figs and mushrooms and things like that.
And then he, the Dr. O'Harris kind of like put in
the best probiotics that he had done research on
for probably like 30 years.
Each one of these probiotics kind of works
in different parts of your digestive system.
So again, like created this whole simulation
of a healthy human gut.
And then just kept it going for three to five years.
And you end up with this product that's really unique
with the postbiotics.
And I've had people, and there's a recommendation
on the box to like, if you're just taking it
as a probiotic, like somebody like Katrina
who's probably stays on top of stuff pretty well
and probably doesn't have too many issues,
you just take one or two a day.
That's fine.
It's a probiotic.
You just kind of keep it up with things.
But if you're coming off of an antibiotic,
that's a classic example, or you've had diarrhea,
or you have some chronic digestive issues,
the box recommends this.
And I think this is really a good guidance
as you start with a higher amount.
You kind of get that ecosystem back in your gut.
You get this whole microbiome system in your gut.
So you take like, I go as far as six a day,
but you know, four to six a day,
I kind of tell people do that until you feel better.
And I've had this one customer in particular,
he said, oh, I started taking this
and I had chronic gut issues.
I forget what they were specifically.
I don't know, maybe IBS, something like that.
But he said he's had this for years.
He's tried everything, he's tried this and that,
prescriptions, whatever.
And nothing really got to the bottom of it.
And he said after taking this for one week
at that high dosage, like I said,
he finally started to feel normal again, then.
Wow, that's really quick, actually.
Yeah, and that's-
Because digestive issues can be at lifelong,
they can be forever.
And for some people, it might take a little bit more time,
but I think if you hit it hard,
and you kind of get this kind of replacement,
you get this ecosystem starting your gut,
it's really powerful.
And I've had the same experience,
I've used this, the nice thing about this product
is it doesn't need to be refrigerated.
It's-
It's for weight for travel.
They're foil wraps, so the foil wrapping
keeps them protected from moisture
and from the elements, basically.
So I've taken them on trips.
And I've been on trips even, you know,
plays like India, for example.
And, you know, people start to, you know, like,
I've been at a restaurant where a bunch of,
we all ate the same food,
and then we all got sick, this classic story, right?
Like, food poisoning sickness,
very classic in India or other parts of the world.
And then, I started taking this, you know, intensely,
six a day, for a couple days.
After a day or two, I was kind of back to normal.
Other folks I was traveling with at the time,
they-
there was like a week, you know,
some of them are still kind of suffering,
even a week later.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was like, I probably should have shared it with them.
Oh gosh, Stephen.
Next time.
They're my control group, guys.
It's a great, yes, exactly.
It's for science.
You can't help it.
It's for science.
Look at that.
Look at back at it now, anyways.
But, yeah, this is really a great product.
I like to have it on hand because you never know
when you're going to get food poisoning or, you know,
just like, feel a little bit off.
I don't take it every day.
I eat a lot of fermented foods.
But, you know, I'll take it from time to time.
You can't plan for those things to happen,
but you can plan and prepare if they happen.
Exactly.
Really smart and I appreciate that story.
Actually, Stephen, as funny as it was.
Because that's a great point of this.
This is a great way, a reason why to have it on you.
A number of products you guys offer are kind of like that,
I think, where they're good things to have on hand.
Yeah.
You're going to want them when you need them.
We should have a little tool kit thing.
Great idea.
Great idea.
You know, ourselves or our dad, like things
that we've just always kept in our cabinet.
You know, like this product, this probiotic, you know,
all things a probiotic doesn't expire until basically
2027.
So you're going to use it sometimes like that.
Yeah.
And if you haven't, you know, by, you know,
the middle of 2026 to start taking it,
it's going to be good for you.
It's going to be good for you.
Yeah.
I think it's always good to, like, periodically
take a probiotic, just kind of like refresh the system,
even if you're doing really good digestively.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is one of the, there's so much that ties back
to our stomach and our digestive system.
And there's so many people out there struggling
with this or that.
And they kind of think, well, this is where we normally
go with it.
I would attack it this way or that way.
When really the whole time it's been your gut
that could really use the help, really use the assistance.
And that's what a lot of these products are.
They're an assist to your body to help it do what it's,
it's job.
They, I love the allo that you brought up too.
The oldest plant that I can remember,
my mother having my whole lifetime is an allo plant.
She has the toolkit.
Yep, she's got it.
And that thing was just a Swiss army knife of being able
to help with anything my brother or sister or I got into.
They're, they're an amazing plant.
I got to get that for her.
She's going to love that.
That's, that's, that's not a, not a gift.
I'm just going to give it to her.
But that is something I'm doing for sure.
Did you have anything else before you ran?
Yeah.
So we got a couple things, a couple more we want to highlight.
Speaking of traveling to India, when we traveled to India,
we learned a little bit more about a product
called Aravatic Digest, formula.
So for those people that don't know what is Aravata,
it is kind of like Chinese medicine.
It's India's own cultural medicine and lifestyle, really.
Stephen actually studied it for like six months in India.
Gosh, like 15 years ago.
Yeah, it's been a while.
But he he's more versed in Aravata medicine
and the different herbs that are used.
But this formula is a really cool one.
That is something that you can help with.
This is wild, right?
It can help with constipation.
But it can also help with diarrhea.
So a product that can do both.
It's kind of like creating that ecosystem again,
or something back to it.
It's creating balance that a person needs.
So there's different herbs that will help balance the system.
And that's a really cool product.
They did another thing that's really cool about this,
because this is sort of like alo2, it's in capsules.
You just take a couple, I think two at bedtime.
But they did a 28 day study.
And like Katrina said, they found that for the participants
in the study, 49% found a reduction in constipation.
So half the people that had issues with constipation,
their constipation improved.
45% that had diarrhea, their diarrhea improved.
So they never know how diarrhea.
Also helped with less indigestion.
64% found that.
Helped with decreased abdominal pain, 70%.
And then this is an important one, acid reflux.
Alvaro is very good too, but this 72% of people
found a reduction in acid reflux.
This is a great number.
Worth a try for fast food.
I like to take this at least once or twice a year.
And you can take it daily.
Well, I encourage you to pick Steven's brain about it too.
I put that brain to work and everything.
It sounds real.
Actually, we'd love to hear more about that sometime
when we have time.
And we only tackle the few of these things.
So we'll have to come back for part two of digestive health.
Absolutely.
More come to our presentation in September.
Yeah, that's going to be September 24th at 5.15.
But instead, make sure you come tonight.
4.30, red sands be each lake with each other.
We're going to be doing an herb walk.
So bring some comfy shoes and come to learn.
It's about 4.30 when this is wrapping up.
If everybody's running late, can they still tag in?
And join you guys.
Yeah, find a little group walking around by red sands.
Right, right.
Look for the happy people.
Enjoy.
Enjoy you guys.
Have a great time with the walk today.
And thank you so much for everything you do in the community
and hanging out with us.
Find out more at our friends and family
and at your foods at 910 West Grand Avenue right here in Wisconsin
rabbit to be sure to bookmark their web page, familynetrafood.com.
Follow them on Instagram, Facebook.
It's a great follow and keep in mind you can give them a call 715-423-3120-423-3120.
Find out more of familynetrafood.com.
We'll be back with more midday magazine right here at WFHR.
