Herbalist, pharmacist, teacher and learner Dr. Lana Camiel shares the backstory of her focus on biology, a balanced life, and integrative medicine. From lessons learned from a dog, to observations of a grandmother’s courageous selflessness, to uncovering the myriad benefits of herbs for cooking, eating, and overall health, this episode is full of insights that will leave the listener eager to dig deeper into the fascinating world of plants. Whether you are seeking ways to minimize stress or improve your digestion, this conversation with Lana will pique your interest and point you in the right direction to learn even more. (And a great place to start is with Lana's free downloadable guide!)
The many hats of Lana Camiel (3:20)
Lover of dogs (3:50)
A dog’s joy of snow leads to a life lesson (5:30)
Pharm D or Registered Pharmacist? (6:15)
Herbalist or? and? pharmacist (8:05)
Two valid paths to wellness (9:00)
Exploring herbal solutions to address a significant situation (9:15)
Prevention is an important component of quality of life (10:00)
Integrative medicine is closer than the horizon (11:00)
A wise combination of approaches is “good medicine” (11:30)
An immigrant at the age of sixteen (12:25)
Computers, medicine – a shift in interests (13:05)
Great-grandmother – homeopathic pharmacist in Kiev, Ukraine (13:25)
Great-grandfather – conventional pharmacist (13:40)
Childhood memories of remedies administered by mother and grandmother (14:00)
Pharmacy school’s demanding coursework (15:00)
A hot August afternoon and being overwhelmed (15:30)
Anxiety attack (16:00)
Success, but with questions (16:25)
An awareness of the need for self-care (16:35)
Seeking out mentors with an interest and understanding of natural medicines (17:00)
Experimenting and creating personal experiences (17:50)
Maintaining a pharmacist’s mindset and practice - adverse effects, indications, interactions (18:00)
Herbal medicine is a living medicine (18:10)
We are here because of plants (18:25)
Grandmother taught Russian language and literature for fifty years (19:10)
Have to look for solutions – as a teacher or in survival mode (19:45)
Being generous with others is a big part of living a good life and a long life (20:10)
Curiosity inherited from grandmother (20:30)
Chernobyl explosion, relocation, earthquake in Moldova (20:50)
Plants where you might not expect them (23:15)
The resilience of plants and their medicinal benefits – weeds?! (23:50)
Disturbed soil and disturbed environments mitigated by plants (24:30)
Plants as aids to digestion and central nervous system issues (26:50)
Peter Rabbit and herbal medicine (26:25)
COVID-19, stressors, and advice for these difficult times (27:30)
Need more emphasis on vitamin D, physical activity (28:30)
Medicinal mushrooms and the immune system (29:05)
Plants can help deal with stress (29:45)
The best way to learn is to create experiences, focus on how things go together (31:10)
Experiment to learn (32:00)
Apply learning to your own life (33:00)
Curiosity is a main connection to learning (34:00)
What do you want to learn? What is your passion? What are you trying to solve? (34:30)
The first step in learning must be incredibly meaningful (35:15)
PlantLoveRadio.com – deep and wide content (35:50
Aging gracefully, stress, chocolate, sleep, city living, vegetarianism (36:15)
Medicine making, clinical use, cooking and eating (37:00)
Herbs as adaptogens, cognition boosters, wild remedies (37:45)
Herbs can enter your life in many ways – tea, spices (39:15)
Smuggling herbs into your life – a free downloadable guide (40:00)
Favorite teachers and mentor - grandmother – kind, giving, community (41:00)
Another favorite teacher and mentor – simplify, early wins, build (41:35)
Lana’s podcast page and website
Brain boosters Plant Love Radio podcast episode
Wild remedies Plant Love Radio podcast episode
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Free Downloadable Guide – Smuggling Herbs Into Your Life
David Reynolds: What matters most in learning? The challenge, the thrill, the benefits, interacting with other people or something else entirely? What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning or does learning drive change? What's more important, teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader, a learner, a teacher? Want answers? Listen in as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead. Learn. Change.
Dr. Lana Camiel: One of the first questions that I'm going to ask is what are you curious about? What are you passionate about? What do you want to learn? She would be just so thrilled. She would try to eat the snow. She would try to roll in the snow. And it just reminded me that it's all a matter of perspective. So how you view your life and how you view the events around you, it's really totally dependent on you.
There were a lot of turbulent times during my teenage years. So Chernobyl blew up and we had to move from one republic to another. As a pharmacist, I learned how to take care of others whether it is cardiovascular disease or cancer or various other conditions, but I didn't really know how to take very good care of myself.
On a one very hot August afternoon, I was sitting in my bedroom and I was sobbing. I really didn't know exactly what happened. I didn't want to go back to school. I discovered herbal medicine because I was looking for a way to deal with my own situation. Medicinal mushrooms, many of them have amazing compounds that are super protective for your immune system. My grandmother was a teacher. My grandmother taught Russian language and literature for 50 years of her life. Whenever you want to learn something, you need to create. You need to figure out how to build it, how to put it together. The amount of information that both of us have learned as a result of creating our own podcast is incredible.
One of the things that I have been working on is creating this short guide on how to smuggle herbs into your life. And what I would love to do is offer your listeners an opportunity to actually download this guide.
David Reynolds: Today's guest on Lead. Learn. Change. is Dr. Lana Camiel. Lana, thanks for taking your time to speak with me today.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Thank you for having me, David.
David Reynolds: And listeners, before we dive into our conversation, please know that the information shared on the podcast today is not medical advice and is not intended to serve as diagnosis, treatment, prevention or cure of any medical issue and is not a substitute for the guidance and recommendations of your personal healthcare provider. Now back to our guest. Lana, you are a PharmD, a registered pharmacist, herbalist, published author, fellow podcaster, resident of Boston, Massachusetts, pharmacy professor, a self-described lifelong learner and a lover of dogs, dancing, and herbs and spices. Which one of those hats do you enjoy wearing the most?
Dr. Lana Camiel: They're all different ones but probably lifelong learner.
David Reynolds: Not a lover of dogs then. So let's talk about dogs for a second.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Sure.
David Reynolds: We'll go back to lifelong learner. So when you say a lover of dogs, does that mean that you are an owner of many or a rescuer of strays or a trainer? What does that mean?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Former owner. Right now both of our pups passed away a couple of years ago. One a year ago, the other one a couple of years ago. We are considering getting another pup, rescuing another dog. So that's where we are at. My mom also has a younger puppy or a small puppy. So I spent quite a bit of time with him as well.
David Reynolds: Rescuer was part of that equation on lover of dogs. What's your favorite breed?
Dr. Lana Camiel: There are many different ones. I know my husband loves Labradors and so I'm so used to these amazing creatures. They are loyal, they are kind, they're wonderful. I've had an airedale terrier or terror as we used to say and we talk about or we remember her so fondly. She was one of the most curious creature you've ever seen. She always wanted to know something and figure out what's going on. So just a fabulous personality. But it's fascinating to see how different the dogs are. So anyone who has ever had kids always know that their kids are different, but dogs are very different temperamentally as well. So even if you had two labs, both of them will be very different.
David Reynolds: So back to the Airedale terrier terror, it's interesting that you mentioned that one because the curiosity piece seems to line up with your lifelong learner. You said that that dog was always wanting to figure something out.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Yes.
David Reynolds: Maybe you had this connection because of the lifelong learner piece. What's the greatest lesson then that you've learned from a dog?
Dr. Lana Camiel: They love the snow. So Boston gets a lot of snow during the winter and so a lot of people usually complain here. Oh, it's harder with the transportation and whatnot. Every time it would snow, we would go outside and Jeannie, that was her name, she would be just so thrilled. She would try to eat the snow and she would try to roll in the snow. And it just reminded me that it's all a matter of perspective. So how you view your life and how you view the events around you, it's really totally dependent on you.
David Reynolds: The designations PharmD and RpH or registered pharmacist mean what exactly? I think I understand that there's a subtle distinction mostly connected to how people look for qualifications that are not really, and these are not really indicative designations of one's expertise necessarily. You hold both. So when somebody sees those at their pharmacist counter, what do those exactly mean and how does that matter?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Of course. So RpH means registered pharmacist. So anyone that said through a licensure examination and passed the the board successfully becomes a registered pharmacist. I became a registered pharmacist after my bachelor's degree completing this program and sitting for the licensure exam. Then I decided that I would like to continue my training and so I went for two additional years of school and that's when I got a PharmD, doctor of pharmacy degree.
Right now most of the schools or many of the schools of pharmacy actually have a PharmD degree. So you receive a PharmD degree upon completion. And part of the reason why pharmacy as a profession kind of move in this direction because they prioritize clinical expertise and prioritize clinical practice in the world of pharmacy a lot more these days. So not every pharmacist that you will meet will have a PharmD degree especially those that graduated some time ago.
It also depends on where you practice. If you practice for an industry or if you're doing research so you might have a PhD or you might have a different degree. So PharmD is a very clinical degree and that's what it means.
David Reynolds: More years of schooling.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Correct, correct.
David Reynolds: The herbalist piece is a separate set of coursework and licensure or certification that you went through. How common is the cross pollination, so to speak of herbalist and pharmacists?
Dr. Lana Camiel: I have met several pharmacists who are herbalists and several herbalists that are pharmacists, but typically it's not very common. Sometimes you will see other healthcare professionals that also train as herbalists. You can see nurses and physicians and other practitioners, but once again it's not something that is commonly expected.
David Reynolds: That puts you in a special position of being able to really educate both sides of the house, which I'm assuming you do with your students that you teach as a professor.
Dr. Lana Camiel: I do, do that, yes.
David Reynolds: Let's stay there for just a second. How do you lead others to see the value in looking at the herbalist side of what you do?
Dr. Lana Camiel: I think that the easiest way to do it is to lead by example and also show people how they can utilize their herbal knowledge in their own life. And this is how it happened for me. I discovered herbal medicine because I was looking for a way to deal with my own situation when I was in college. I think I mentioned it to you in previous conversations that I had an anxiety attack or panic attack at some point and I didn't know that at the time, but I started recognizing that something needs to be changed in my own life.
So I started looking for different types of solution. And my solution or at least in my own life came as a way of learning more about herbal medicine and learning more about ways to use a cup of tea as something that's coming and relaxing, and something that can help to ground you. So having this in my own life helped me to assist and to guide my own students to recognize that everyone is dealing with something in their own life and even if we generally think that we are relatively healthy, there is a preventative piece that can also be very helpful.
So more and more today, I have students that approach me asking questions about dealing with certain conditions or dealing with certain situations. They're not necessarily diagnoses. They're not something that is you know incredibly severe or something that is very dangerous, but it's something that they want to figure out to improve their quality of life in one way or another. So I always applaud and I always help them to learn more about different things that are available to them and that's probably the best way of learning and leading.
David Reynolds: It sounds like you're really describing functional medicine that looks at something beyond a narrow symptom realizing that if you just treat a symptom, you're not getting at root cause. Do you foresee a more open-minded approach with a blend perhaps of traditional medicine with more of this functional medicine? Do you see that looming on the horizon at all?
Dr. Lana Camiel: I think it's closer than the horizon. I think there are a number of people in medical profession that already are doing it. There is a concept of integrative medicine and so the idea there is that you're not necessarily looking at one or the other like complementary and alternative, but you are trying to take the best of both worlds. So the person might be taking pharmaceutical drugs but at the same time they might be drinking a tea or they might be taking a syrup or something like this. So combining these things wisely and knowing when to use one versus another, it's just good medicine.
David Reynolds: Back to your personal experience that led you to explore more, share with us whatever you would like to share about that and please mention your grandmother because there's a huge component of her influence that really did reinforce what you were doing when you needed to start doing it for yourself.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Yes, of course. So I came to the United States when I was 16 years old and I came here and I went to high school. I decided to pursue a career in pharmacy. So it's actually quite interesting because every time I discuss how I chose my profession, most of my american friends are very surprised. But this is very typical in Russian families or Russian immigrant families. The decision was made together by a family, right? So we were looking at different options that were available, but at the same time my parents were asking me, "What do you want to do?" But once again, it was made as a group.
So when I was in former Soviet Union, I studied computers for about a year and a half and then when I came here, I was hoping to pursue a slightly different field. Medicine seemed interesting and appealing and as you mentioned before my great-grandmother was a homeopathic pharmacist back in Kiev, in Ukraine. She was in some ways an inspiration. I have never met my great-grandmother, but I have heard from my mom and my grandmother quite a bit about her own professional journey.
My great-grandfather was a conventional pharmacist and she was a homeopathic pharmacist. So there were two different pharmacists in the family. And it was interesting because my grandmother and my mom have used homeopathy during my childhood. And I remember using these little white pellets that are homeopathic remedies for coughs and colds and various other things. So when I came here and I started thinking about what would that career for me, what would it look like, medicine and not necessarily homeopathy, but medicine came into my mind.
I always had a passion for helping people and I liked chemistry. I liked biology. So all these things came together. So I applied to a pharmacy school. I got in and I was very grateful and very appreciative, but you have to remember that I was still a very new immigrant here. I was here probably for a couple of years. The first year of pharmacy school was incredibly harsh and it was not harsh because of things that were happening because I made new friends and I had really wonderful environment, but the courses themselves were incredibly demanding and the school... I did go to one year of high school here in the United States.
The high school was very different in comparison to the college. So the expectations were so dramatically different. I started recognizing that this is a lot more difficult than I expected and on a one very hot August afternoon, I was sitting in my bedroom and I was sobbing. And this is where my parents found me and they couldn't figure out what was going on. They were asking me what happened. And for the longest time, I really didn't know exactly what happened. I didn't want to go back to school. I didn't want to go back to college because it was just too tough.
The amount of time that I spent studying in biology and chemistry and various other disciplines, I just didn't feel comfortable. I felt that I didn't belong there. So all these things surfaced as these situations where I was crying and sobbing. And later on, I realized that that was my very first anxiety attack that how it surfaced. And things became a lot better. I went on with my education, with my training. I figured out how to do things better. But still there was this little thing that was nagging in the back of my head that am I in the right place? Do I know how to take care of myself?
So this idea of taking care of myself persisted. Once again, as a pharmacist, I learned how to take care of others whether it is cardiovascular disease or cancer or various other conditions, but I didn't really know how to take very good care of myself. So as it kept coming back into my own life, I knew that I needed to search for solutions.
As my great-grandmother and her teaching or her guidance even started coming back to me, what about more natural approaches to medicine? So later in my training, I started coming back to this and looking for professors and mentors that had training in these disciplines that had interest in these disciplines that would be open to guiding me further and teaching me what I can learn on my own. To make the long story short, I ended up going to a couple of different herbal schools like apprenticeships and more formal herbal education and really learning a lot more about it and becoming a lot more confident in approaching this type of information, this type of knowledge.
But nothing really truly started happening to me until I started experiencing and experimenting with these things in my own life. As a pharmacist, I always approached this from a perspective of what are the adverse effects, and what are the indications, and what are the interactions? Herbal medicine is a living medicine. It's something that a lot of people have been experimenting with over the centuries. We are here because of plants.
So drinking chamomile tea does not necessarily need to be thought of as what are the adverse effects and what is the safety profile. So when I started drinking and consuming these food-like herbs, life has changed a great deal for me.
David Reynolds: Your grandmother did this same sort of thing when you were growing up, correct?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Reynolds: You saw her experimenting with herbs and foods and just living healthy because you did a blog post about her where you asked about the secret to long life. I know she was 95 I think at the time of that writing. So how did those things connect?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Sure, sure. So this is a grandmother that you're talking. So my great grandmother was a homeopathic pharmacist. Her daughter, my grandmother was a teacher. So my grandmother taught Russian language and literature for 50 years of her life and she's the one who immigrated with me. She's 99 today and not like right now. So she has experimented with a lot of things during her lifetime, but herbs was something that had a special place in her heart as well. I don't necessarily think of her as someone who eats super healthy, but there are certain things that she does that are incredible and they are certainly something that helps us to live a better life.
She's a fighter. That's probably one of the most important thing that you can do. She knows that you have to look for solutions and this is whether it is your teacher's mindset or whether it is your survival mindset, but she's always looking for good solutions. So sometimes they come as herbs and other times they come in other forms and other ways. She has enormous amount of energy that she freely and kindly gives to others and I think that that's a very, very big component of good life and long life that you are communicating with others, that you are always living in this community that supports you, that you support.
She's always very passionate and very curious. So that curiosity is something that without a doubt, I inherited from her and that curiosity certainly helped her a great deal throughout her life and is helping me in mine.
David Reynolds: I read about the earthquake.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Yes.
David Reynolds: And you talked about what you learned about your grandmother in that moment. So share that as well.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Sure. We live in Moldova for a couple of years and this happened... So there were a lot of turbulent times during my teenage years. So Chernobyl blew up and we had to move from one republic to another. So we moved from Ukraine to Moldova. So we lived in Moldova with my relatives. It's a beautiful republic. It's right next to Romania and we really enjoyed being there with our extended family.
This was a night before September 1st and that's why I remembered it because we were preparing for the first day of school. And in the middle of the night, I actually slept through most of it. So I remember just bits and pieces, but we have been discussing especially recently with my grandmother what it was like. So they had an earthquake on the Richter scale, it was eight something. So it was a pretty severe earthquake. We were on the ninth floor of a very tall and very big cement building with family members.
We lived in a room and so they were gracious to allow us to be there. And they had this glass... It wasn't chandelier, but some sort of glass lamp or something like this. And during the earthquake, this is what was happening. It fell down and all these bits and pieces of glass falling everywhere and flying everywhere. My grandmother thought that the war was coming because she lived through the war when she was young. So she was trying to cover my body with her own. So this is just something that I still remember waking up and seeing my grandmother laying on top of me. A traumatic experience, but nevertheless something that brings the two of you so close together living through something like this.
David Reynolds: Those types of connections with people really make such an impact, and you carry that lesson and think about how you're interacting with other people and what matters most.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Of course.
David Reynolds: One of the things that really matters to you also obviously is plants. You have a podcast, Plant Love Radio.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Yes.
David Reynolds: What are some of the most interesting plants that you have learned about or come across as a result of the guests that you've interviewed on your podcast?
Dr. Lana Camiel: It's a great question. When you're thinking about plants in general, you start realizing how fascinating they are. I have a construction that's going on outside of my window right now and to do this construction, they are trying to extend public transportation branch. So they had to take down all the plants like the green wall that we had previously and what's really interesting to me is that we have this separation between the construction site and the sidewalk. And right between it, so kind of like in the middle, there are all these plants, these wild plants that are growing. When I look at them and I realize how many of them are medicinal in nature, that absolutely blows my mind because this is something that you see in general that medicinal plants are these weeds that come out of nowhere, it seems and they take over and they are there to help with disturbed soil and disturbed environment, and they're there to help to remediate the soil.
So very often they pull all sorts of things that are pumped whether it is along the riverbeds or various other places. So they are really doing quite a bit of this. They are really doing quite a bit of cleanup and remediation and they are just maintaining their source of medicine, their source of food. They are there for animals. They are there for people. So just that component alone absolutely fascinates me. And I always look at these little weeds that are growing everywhere and I try to figure out what they are. There are a lot more apps these days that you can actually identify them with, but I know that that's not exactly the question that you asked, but that came into my mind.
But in general, people that I speak with in my podcast often they talk about different topics and there are different types of discussions. So it's very hard to say, do you have a favorite plant? Most people really don't don't go for that, but I think that for most herbalists, when you start asking like is there a group of plants that you use first for example in your patients or in someone that you are taking care of, most of the times it's going to be plants that are used for digestion or plants that are used for central nervous systems.
So if you want to digest more properly, perhaps you have heard about bitters like digestive bitters. So there are some alcoholic beverages that are made with digestive bitters and all of these things are made to help you to process everything that you're taking in there are other things. I mentioned chamomile a little bit earlier. This is one of my personal favorites. Once again, hugely important for digestion. Whether you are reading about Peter Rabbit or whether you're experimenting with it on your own, you know that it's very soothing, it's very relaxing, it's really wonderful.
There are a lot of other digestive plants that you can find, but learning and getting to know them is really, really important. And then that second category of the nervines or plants that are used for nervous system. This is also very important. If your digestion is working optimally and you feel like you can handle the stress that is surrounding you in your own life, most other things will fall into place. Not always. Sometimes things need to be guided a lot more, but these are definitely two areas that every herbalist looks at first.
David Reynolds: COVID-19 and all of the ramifications it has is touching on virtually every sector economically, socially throughout the world. There are a lot of people in education, in healthcare, and of course other sectors that are dealing with new kinds of stressors. Whether they feel over anxious or not, there is an impact on their daily life, their routines, et cetera. What would you say to people who are managing social distancing and quarantining? Does it go back to your digestive, balanced diet and nervous system or is there something else that's a great piece of advice for people if they're wanting to explore this area because they may have time to learn and they may have a new reason for learning right now.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Of course. And I'm super appreciative of the fact that you're asking this question because I have a newsletter that I send out to the listeners of my podcast and to the readers of anything that I publish. And very recently something that came across my desk was information on how we are handling stress, but also how we're handling the whole entire situation. So masks and hand sanitizers and things of that type have become very well accepted and most of us are comfortable with this. But I think there are other elements that a lot of people in the herbal world and just natural medicine world really looking at and recognizing that there is not enough emphasis that are placed on them.
And these are things like vitamin D that you get through your sun through being outside. Just being more physically active in general. Considering and exploring different types of supplements especially those that are supportive to your immune system. So medicinal mushrooms, this is one area that I absolutely love to talk about and love taking and love exploring and cooking with. And many of them have amazing compounds that are super protective for your immune system. They trigger your immune system to be a little bit more on an alert in comparison to the typical state, but they are not the antigens, the actual virus or bacteria or something like this, but they wake up your immune system and asking it to be a little bit more on alert.
So this is one of the reasons why I think that they are wonderful and more people should learn more about medicinal mushrooms and other immune modulating herbs. So this would be my first advice. And of course, what you mentioned is the idea of stress and learning what are some of the herbs that can be more coming and more relaxing and some of the other ones that are going to be more adaptogenic in nature. And adaptogen means these are plants that are supporting adrenal glands, the place where our body secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine, and these are the stress modulating hormones like the tiger or whatever it is. Things that force us to run quicker just to move more and get away from the danger.
So the adaptogens are really good about supporting these adrenal glands and making sure that you are not overextending yourself and you are trying to decrease the amount of exhaustion that your body can go through.
David Reynolds: You're teaching us right now and it makes me think about your teaching in your formal teaching role with your students. What is it that you do that has the greatest impact on the learning that happens with your students?
Dr. Lana Camiel: I teach a variety of topics. As you mentioned, I'm a pharmacy professor. I'm a bit of a geek. I love technology. I love exploring technology and I'm very much a lover of plants. So when I teach, usually I think that the best way for someone to learn is to experience. To experiment, to experience and to apply in their own life. You and I when we talk about podcasting, this is probably the amount of information that both of us have learned as a result of creating our own podcast is incredible. And I think that that's a good example that whenever you want to learn something, you need to create. You need to figure out how to build it, how to put it together.
So very often, I'll do different types of exercises or different types of projects in my courses where students are experimenting with different herbs or they're experimenting with different plants in different ways. They might be cooking with them. They might be drinking teas. They're reporting how they're feeling and things of that type. So I'm always trying to remind them why they're taking these things, why they're experimenting with them. They're always very safe. They're always food grade type of herbs like chamomile and other ones, but it's something that allows them to process the information,to remember that there are different senses that are involved in best learning. So whether you're tasting it, you're smelling it, you are seeing it, you're experiencing it, you're cooking with it. So really learning in different ways or as many different ways as possible.
And I applied this to all the other classes. I teach a class in digital health which is completely different and seems like way out there, but my love for technology is what allows me to bring this information together. But also this is the same approach. How do we process the information that's in front of us and figure out how to apply it best to our own life?
David Reynolds: So what crossover or implications do you see between that focus in your teaching and learning exchanges providing students with multiple opportunities to experience their learning themselves to dig in more deeply because they want to engage with the content because they found it interesting? So there has to be some lessons there for teachers looking at their students and knowing that they have come from different backgrounds. They have different contexts. They have different schema. How do you merge all that together and what would your advice be to someone who's working with?
Maybe it's immigrants. Maybe it's students of second language or maybe not. But with students in general, how do you get at the core of what is going to interest them because it has to be what they bring to the table? You can't make them interested in something. So talk about that for a minute.
Dr. Lana Camiel: I think the main connection for me is curiosity. I love learning and I think that when any student that I help to guide, I always try to figure out what they're passionate about, what they're curious in. And I think that you're you're 100% correct that in most of the teaching and learning environments that I have, one of the first questions that I'm going to ask is, "What are you curious about? What are you passionate about? What do you want to learn? How is it important to your own life? Do you have family members that perhaps are dealing or struggling with something like this? Is this something that you are struggling in your own life?"
I always feel that when there is a connection, this personal connection that your real life connection that the student has, they're going to be a lot more invested in what they're learning. And it might be only the first step, right? But that first step has to be incredibly meaningful to them. This is always something that I keep in mind that it has to be somehow firmly connected to their own life and it has to be experiential in one way or another. So there should be a way for them to really understand how to grasp this and how to apply this to their own situation.
David Reynolds: I'm actually going to read a little bit on this next question because it touches on this broad spectrum of content that you have on your podcast webpage. Your podcast webpage, plantloveradio.com has a tremendous amount of information available. And you've categorized it for visitors to your website with episodes on growing and eating plants, making herbal remedies, safety considerations which you've mentioned already, science and research so that gets back at that legitimacy, validity piece, we talked about multiple times and even art, which I found really interesting.
Then inside each section, there's multiple segments or episodes people can listen to and here are a few of those that I think will pique listeners interests. Aging gracefully, stress, chocolate, sleep, city living, vegetarianism and then there's a whole lot more. Is there any specific episode or two that you would point people to as a great starting point if they wanted to dip into your work on the podcast?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Once again, I think you did a great job in terms of separating or recognizing that there are constellations of different themes. So this is something that I want to communicate to my listeners that they can find different areas and learn more about them. So medicine making is one of them and I'm always very curious and very passionate about them. Clinical uses that may be a little bit more advanced. So in a way when you have someone who is very new to herbal medicine, I think it's a lot easier if they think about it, okay, maybe art pieces. Maybe medicine making or growing. And then as you continue learning about it, you explore these additional clinical uses.
So I always think about clinical uses as a slightly more advanced topic in general. There are a number of different people that I have interviewed and I am very humbled and very grateful for being able to interview these people. Many of them are my mentors or my teachers or my inspirations in the world of herbal medicine. So what makes it so difficult to actually give you a few examples, I think your listeners will be interested in exploring some of the topics.
So one of my teachers we had a conversation about adaptogens. Once again, you and I talked a little bit about these substances, which I think are absolutely amazing. We did this conversation on the latest update on adaptogens. So that was very interesting. Another friend and teacher of mine have been discussing different cognition boosting herbs and I think that a lot of people are really curious and really interested in this particular area.
A relatively recent interview that I did was about wild remedies and herbs that grow around us, and what is it that you can find you know in your neighborhood and how you can apply these things or how you can use them in your own life.
David Reynolds: Those are great starting points and once they visit, they'll see other things that they want to just hover over, click on, and then dig down into a little bit.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Absolutely.
David Reynolds: So we're drawing to a close, Lana. Two final items. I always ask is there anything that you want to add that we fail to uncover?
Dr. Lana Camiel: Sure. I think you asked a lot of great questions. So one thing that I didn't talk a lot about but probably this is a good time to mention is that herbs can come in your life in many different ways and that's the beauty of them that you can use herbs in your hot chocolate or you can use them in a tea or you can use chia seeds with aloe juice. And this is one of the recommendations that I got from a guest of mine relatively recently and former teacher of mine as well.
So you can see that a lot of different plants can be incorporated in many, many different ways. Spices are incredibly important and great ways to incorporate herbal medicine into your life. So one of the things that I have been working on is creating this short guide on how to smuggle herbs into your life in different tasty and unique ways. And what I would love to do is offer your listeners an opportunity to actually download this guide on my website and actually explore and learn a little bit more of how they can bring these things into their own life.
David Reynolds: Great. We will have a link in the show notes so people can click on that and find the address. Will that simply be clearly visible on your website when people visit?
Dr. Lana Camiel: It's plantloveradio.com/bonus.
David Reynolds: Okay, got it. Last item. Another favorite question. You've mentioned mentors twice and obviously, we've talked about teaching. You and your mentors as teachers, this can be from any place, school, a colleague now or a mentor in the past or a family member. It doesn't really matter. Who is your favorite teacher and why? And if you must list two, that's quite all right.
Dr. Lana Camiel: My grandmother is going to be the first teacher and mentor, and I think one of the reasons. And I think I mentioned those as well is she was very kind and very giving and someone who always brought community together. So I always loved that about her and I loved this in terms of thinking how you should be teaching that you should bring students and you should bring the community together, and that's always has been very inspiring to me.
Then when I was a teenager before we left Soviet Union, I was studying software engineering. I was studying computers. And one of my favorite teachers was this woman that was teaching us how to program. And what I loved about her approach is that she would teach you how to draw a human body like a little stick person, right? That would be number one. That would be the first step. Then she would take you one step further, and one step further, and one step further. So by the end of semester, we would have a bustling city with cars and buildings and shops and whatever, but it all started with that stick figure with this person. So that really stayed with me, this ability to simplify things and make them very easy to digest and process and get that win early on that you can actually build that city at the very end.
David Reynolds: I thought you were going to go in a different direction with the stick figure with a zooming in. Now we're on the arm and now we're going to zoom in and start looking at the vascular system. And you could do that in both ways. So you can do the zoom in or zoom out look.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Absolutely.
David Reynolds: And it all becomes about networks and connections no matter how you look at it.
Dr. Lana Camiel: Absolutely.
David Reynolds: So I just really want to thank you for being here today and really enlightening us about this integrative medicine approach and how these areas of health intersect. This has been extremely interesting, highly informative, and we'll add the links again to your web page in the episode show notes. So thanks again, Lana. It's been really great.
Dr. Lana Camiel: David, I want to thank you for what you're doing, for bringing awareness to a lot of interesting and important topics, and thank you so much for having me.
David Reynolds: You're welcome. Have a great day.
Dr. Lana Camiel: You too.
David Reynolds: Thanks for listening today. Find the Lead. Learn. Change. podcast on your search engine, iTunes or other listening app. Leave a rating, write a review, subscribe and share with others. In the meantime go lead, go learn, go make a change. Go. (silence)