Southern folk medicine with Phyllis D. Light

​TAKEAWAYS

  • What are some of the unique features of Southern folk medicine
  • How tastes and signs assist in evaluating patient’s concerns
  • What are the best ways to start exploring Southern folk medicine

MEET OUR GUEST

Phyllis D. Light is a fourth generation herbalist and healer. She has studied and worked with herbs, foods and other healing techniques for over 30 years.

Her studies in Traditional Southern Appalachian Folk Medicine began in the deep woods of North Alabama with lessons from her grandmother. In addition to Traditional Folk studies, Phyllis has studied Traditional Western Herbalism, Nutrition, Exercise Science, Body Work and Energy Medicine.

Her well-established reputation and expertise has allowed Phyllis to travel far afield of her Southern Appalachian home. She has been lecturing and teaching about herbs and traditional folk healing techniques at herb schools, universities, medical schools, hospitals and health conferences.

Phyllis devotes herself to building a bridge between traditional herbal and healing knowledge that has been handed down from generation to generation while embracing the scientific discoveries of today.

PODCAST GIVEAWAY AND BONUSES

This episode comes with bonuses.

To explore those, please head over to https://ko-fi.com/plantloveradio

​WEB RESOURCES

Appalachian Center for Natural Health

​BOOKS

Southern Folk Medicine: Healing Traditions from the Appalachian Fields and Forests 

TRANSCRIPT

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Southern folk medicine with Phyllis Light
Phyllis: There's four elements - two pairs, there's four tastes - two pairs. So just having this binary system, that's really quick and easy to learn because it's based on our vocabulary... we don't have to learn a new vocabulary. It makes it really easy to pick up and unique there.
I wanted people to know, we have this history, this is ours. I mean, Traditional Chinese medicine is phenomenal. It's amazing. It goes back thousands and thousands of years and is well documented. But Hey, these are our plants here. Right. And this is how you use them. And we have a medicine here.
So I wanted people to know that and to understand how important it is that it's survived. And so Southern folk medicine had always been passed down orally and I wanted to get it down on paper, so it didn't die.
Intro
You're listening to Plant Love Radio episode number 75.
Lana: Hello friends. I hope you're having a great week. I'm excited to share today with you an interview with a guest Phyllis D. Light. Phyllis is a fourth generation herbalist and healer. She has studied and worked with herbs, food and other healing techniques for over 30 years.
Her studies in Traditional Southern Appalachian folk medicine began in the deep woods of North Alabama with lessons from her grandmother. Her grandmother's herbal knowledge came from her roots in Creek and Cherokee heritage. Phyllis has continued to study herbal medicine as an apprentice with the late Tommie Bass, a nationally renowned folk herbalist from Sandrock Alabama, as well as other herbal elders throughout the Appalachians and the deep South.
In addition to traditional folks studies, Phyllis has explored traditional Western herbalism nutrition, exercise science, body work and energy medicine. Her well established reputation and expertise allowed Phyllis to travel far a field in her Southern Appalachian home. She has been lecturing and teaching about herbs and traditional folk healing techniques at herb schools, universities, medical schools, hospitals, and health conferences.
As a practitioner, Phyllis has experience in both clinical and private setting, including an integrative medical clinic. As a consultant she manages her own herbal consulting business advising businesses, schools, physicians, and manufacturers.
Phyllis has a master's degree from the university of Alabama in health studies and is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild.
She devotes herself to building a bridge between traditional herbal and healing knowledge that has been handed down from generation to generation while embracing the scientific discoveries of today.
In this episode, we will look at some of the unique features of Southern folk medicine, how tastes and signs assist in evaluating patients concerns and what are some of the best ways to start exploring Southern folk medicine.
Today's episode has a raffle for Phyllis's book, Southern folk medicine, healing traditions for the Appalachian fields and forests. To participate in the raffle please head over to https://ko-fi.com/plantloveradio and comment on the right episode.
For all the resources mentioned in today's episode, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/75. Enjoy.
Lana: good evening, Phyllis, how are you doing?
Phyllis: Hi, I'm doing good.
Lana: I am excited to have you on the podcast. wanted to begin by asking you about your roots, your family. I know you are a fourth generation herbalist and healer. Can you tell us a little bit more?
Phyllis talks about her family, roots and upbringing
Phyllis: Yeah. My family always lived in this area, so I've never moved away. And I still live where my family has lived for more than four generations and we can trace our roots back way back. My grandmother - my dad's mother was a midwife and herbalist in one of the outlying communities from where I'm living now.
And my dad was a wildcrafter and gathered herbs in the woods for sale. So I began very early, around 10 have been in the woods learning the plants and gathering the herbs. My great grandmother, who I never met, who had died long before I was born, she was also a midwife and herbalist and a Native American descent. And she was the one that taught my grandmother.
And so we can actually on paper trace back my herbal lineage to the Civil War. But before the civil war, which ended in 1865, we can't really go back further. So it may actually be more than four generations, but that's close enough.
So it's always been in this area. It's always been here. So, I just started very early. My dad never really had a big practice, like my grandmother again. And at one point in my grandmother's life, the state made midwives illegal. And so she wasn't able to fully do what she'd been trained to do.
And so they moved away for a while because my grandfather heard about jobs up North, where you could go to work and you can get social security and then you'd have that in retirement. So they moved away for a while and we went up North and, Then they came back after a number of years. So it was kind of a really interesting upbringing.
This part of the country when I was in my youth was still in a lot of poverty and people had to be very self sufficient. And there were very few doctors. And nobody had insurance. I mean, nobody even knew about health insurance. And then people who did know couldn't afford it, it wasn't something that was accessible.
So people had to learn how to take care of their self. And then have healers in the community to help them. So that's kind of my background, where it came from.
Lana: That makes a lot of sense. And so, at what point did you know that you are going to follow in their footsteps or was it ever a question for you?
Phyllis: Well, it kind of was a question. As you become a teenager, you don't really want to do what your family did. You want to do something different. I never ever put it down, but I would say a probably didn't like fully embrace it until I was in my mid twenties.
Lana: okay.
Phyllis: And people begin asking me, and I really began practicing. I guess I'd always offered aid to people with my herbal knowledge, but if wasn't until that time, I was like, Oh yeah, I'm really going to do this. And still couldn't make a living at it. Well, it was like more of the thing I did on the side while I had my day job.
Lana: Very interesting. So speaking of day job, I read somewhere that you consider yourself a bridge between traditional knowledge and contemporary science and practice. And I guess part of the reason is your conventional training was in health education and promotion. So I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about why this idea of bringing the best of both worlds was so appealing and so important to you.
Serving as a bridge between two worldsPhyllis: Well, as I went through my Self-education through college and university, I worked my way through the university in the PE department. I taught gymnastics. So as a personal trainer, I was the trainer for the basketball team. So I had always had this interest and had achieved certifications and how the body moves and how to take care of the body from that level.
And so I'm also teaching gymnastics to competition martial arts guys who want to like do no hand cartwheels for competition and back flips and they're in their cottage. And so they were always getting hurt. And this was really serious martial arts. I worked in the dojo where they would crawled across the floor, only using the ends of fingers to propel themselves, to pull themselves. It was serious, but they were always getting hurt.
So I took my knowledge of how the body moves, how the muscles work... that training. It was like, Oh, well, this herb would be helpful, right? Now let's do this. And so then, they were like, Oh, I've got a stomach ache. So I began to see where I could bridge. Even people at university were like Hey, what do I do about this, or how can I help with that?
And I also came to understand, I didn't have a language that I could bridge with and that I could talk Southern and country and I could talk hillbilly and I could talk folk medicine, but the medical profession didn't hear me.
Lana: How interesting...
Phyllis: So having a master's degree in health studies gave me the language I had been missing. And and having that language, I worked two years in an integrative medical clinic in Birmingham. I am associated with a integrative medical clinic right now in Huntsville. And just having that language and also going through university and getting that master's degree in health studies taught me research. You know, just all herbalists are good detectives and good researchers. That's just what we do. But now this opened this other world of research and access to this information. And then I could say, Oh, this is the traditional use. Oh. And guess what? There was a study that backs it up. So it gave me the bridge language I needed, not leaving behind anything traditional, but carrying the tradition forward with me.
The inspiration for Southern folk medicine: Healing traditions from the Appalachian fields and forest
Lana: That's really fabulous. So two years ago, I think you published a book, Southern folk medicine healing traditions from the Appalachian fields and forest. So tell us a little bit about it. What inspired you to write it and who is this book for?
Phyllis: Ah, this book is for everybody. So literally everybody. The first time I ever went to an herbal conference... and I will have to say for a whole lot of years I didn't know there was an herbal community out here. Cause I'm down here in Alabama and we have Tommie Bass, he was a very well nationally known herbalist.
And we had a couple of folk healers and this was my community. I didn't realize there were this big community out there and I didn't realize there were all these herb books out there. And, so I went to work at Clayton College as director of Herbal studies and suddenly there's all these books and all this information that I thought is really amazing. So they sent me to an herbal conference. They were like, we want you to be our communication with these herbal groups. And so the first time I went to an herbal conference and it was a huge herbal conference, they only talked about Traditional Chinese medicine and those were the only herbs they talked about.
And I'm like, wait a minute. Hey, you know, and I kind of held at my hand. What about Our medicine and they're like we don't have a medicine in this country. It all died out. And I went, no, it didn't. I mean, that's what I was taught. And they were like, no way.
Folk medicine, I don't know where you've been living in honey in your cities, but it did not die out here in the South and out in the country because it was needed. And so it was a big shock to me to realize they don't even know their own country's medicine. And as I began to know people in the herbal community and they totally embraced me. Don't get me wrong. It was like, wow, this is amazing. We thought this was all dead. We thought it had all died out. And I'm like, no, let me tell you about this person, this person. I'm not the only person.
Number one I wanted to write this for people so they would know we have a traditional folk medicine, that developed here. Of course Native American medicine did too. I'm not discounting that. But when the settlers came, they had to learn how to survive with nothing. And so they learned the native plant remedies and the combined it with what they were bringing from the old world. And that became the start.
And so I wanted people to know, we have this history, this is ours. I mean, Traditional Chinese medicine is phenomenal. It's amazing. It goes back thousands and thousands of years and is well documented. But Hey, these are our plants here. Right. And this is how you use them. And we have a medicine here.
So I wanted people to know that and to understand how important it is that it's survived. And so Southern folk medicine had always been passed down orally and I wanted to get it down on paper, so it didn't die.
Features of Southern folk medicine
Lana: That's absolutely incredible. So let's dig deeper into the topic itself. So when we're looking at the Southern folk medicine, when you were comparing it, whether with Western herbal is more Traditional Chinese medicine or any other healing practices, what are some of the differences? And what are some of the common features? And also, I know that there are six tenets that are unique to Southern folk medicine. Could you talk about those?
Similarities between healing systems
Phyllis: Okay. well, let's talk about similarities and differences and I think all indigenous systems... and by indigenous, I mean healing systems that developed on the land. So indigenous systems are intimately tied to the land, the geography they develop on and you can't separate it. And the language of the land is just totally part of the whole healing system.
And so where they were talking about Ayurveda, TCM or Cherokee or Creek or African, Australian Aborigine, the commonality is they all developed on the land and the processes the land go through became part of the allegory for discovering the processes in the body.
So when you have open exposed soil and it rains, what happens? Well, if you look at the rain, the rain becomes marshy until the water drain, then the sun comes out and then the sun dries it so fast cracks the land. And so these sorts of descriptions in all these systems became metaphors for what's happening in our body. So now you have too much water, but if you take the water out of your body too fast, you're going to end up with dry skin. You're going to end up with cracks. So it was looking at the earth or the body is an extension of the earth in the elements whatever happened on the earth was happening in our body. And that's pretty common to all systems.
Differences between healing systems
Lana: Okay. So then what's different about the Southern folk medicine?
Phyllis: Well, right off, because it's a fusion of several systems coming together it's going to have a similarity with a whole lot of other systems in the world. But one of the unique things here is that the way Native American medicine and practices got incorporated infused into this other folk medicine as the basis.
So very few plants even initially came over from Europe surviving this ocean voyage. A few did and a few seeds did, but not many and plants from Africa other than some food stuffs really didn't survive. What survived were plants that were either shrubby and could make the trip or they could bring a few seeds or they used the herb initially as food, like dandelion, chickweed. These were all foods. We use them as herbs, and they did . So they had to learn all these plants here in this country. And plants from the Rockies over to the Atlantic coast are pretty similar all the way. And even down into Costa Rica, into parts of Mexico, lot of similar plants.
So learning the plants native to the geographical area makes this unique. The other thing I think it makes it unique is it's a binary system. Everything is in pairs of opposites.
Lana: right.
Phyllis: And I know that there's some of this in TCM. But I think this is unique because it's super simple.
Lana: Right.
Phyllis: There's four elements - two pairs, there's four tastes - two pairs. So just having this binary system, that's really quick and easy to learn because it's based on our vocabulary... we don't have to learn a new vocabulary. It makes it really easy to pick up and unique there.
Lana: And I remember listening to you and you were talking about how every mother and every wife and every person really knew how to use this system. And it just held such a general appeal to most people because they knew that this is something that will be definitely used by the entire family.
So. I want to talk a little bit about those pairs that you mentioned. In your book, you go into great details discussing the constitution. And so constitutions, we certainly discuss them in other systems as well, but you look at them based on the taste and based on the elements. And so you talked about bitters and salty and sour and sweet taste, and also how they relate to each element. Could you help our listeners to figure out how to start creating a framework in their minds around this main concept?
Tastes
Phyllis: Okay. So we'll start with taste and then connect to the element. So the taste associated with the element of fire is bitter. And I really find it interesting when I go to conferences, I'll say, what is the opposite taste of bitter? And everybody goes sweet. And then I go, what's the opposite taste of sour and everybody goes sweet. And I go, are you sure? Because we have gotten so used in our culture of thinking that sweet takes care of any other tastes and it really doesn't. So the opposite fire is bitter and the opposite of fire is water and the taste of water is salty. And salt takes the taste of bitter away.
And so just to bring this awareness into people, because once I start describing it, they go, Oh yeah. If you like coffee, but don't like the bitter taste, it's common knowledge you put salt in your coffee and it takes away the bitter taste. If you like dark chocolate that find it too bitter if they put sea salt in it, It reduces the bitter taste.
Lana: I never thought about it, but I can appreciate that. Yeah, it makes sense.
Phyllis: Oh, salt nullifies bitter.
Lana: Okay.
Phyllis: And it just depends on how much salt you use. You can totally take away the taste of bitter in the dark chocolate if you add enough salt. It'll just be gone. And the same will coffee. Alright, but sweet doesn't take away the bitter taste, it coats over the top of it. Oh, the taste of bitter is the aftertaste. You taste sweet first, the after taste the bitter. So then we have the elements of fire and water. So salt takes away. Bitter water puts out fire as an element,
Lana: Right. And so for the other one, for the air and for the earth, so earth I'm assuming is sweet and then the air is going to be sour.
Phyllis: And air is sour.
Yes. Now from these four tastes, other tastes can be made. Right. But these are your foundations that you put together in various combinations to make pungent
Lana: Okay.
Phyllis: for an example. Well, the taste of meat? What's that called?
Lana: Umami.
Phyllis: Yeah, thanks. So I'm Southern folk medicine that wouldn't be a separate taste, would be how things were combined to make that taste.
Lana: Okay. That makes sense. And so in your book, you talked about different situations where there was too much fire or too much water or too little, so excess, deficiency, different traits. Can you talk a little bit about those?
Phyllis: Yeah, sure. Which is another thing that I think is really unique and easy to understand about Southern folk medicine is excess and deficiency are two extremes. It can be anywhere in between that. Right. But you want to be as close to the middle as you can, because that is homeostasis.
That's our good health right in the center, but we could be anywhere in there between the two. And so if we're just thinking about fire and water, which I think are two easy ones to talk about, if we have too much water, we know that we can have swollen hands and swollen feet, or swollen limbs.
And if we have too much fire in the common vernacular, then we've got heat and we have inflammation or we have fever. So these are the two areas that we understand. And so if you have a high fever, just drinking a glass of cold water will lower your fever.
These are things, all mothers are used to know, drink some cold water and put that baby in a room temperature cold bath, water will bring down the fire.
Lana: So a lot of this is just figuring out how to bring body back to balance?
Phyllis: Isn't that where we want to be. Yeah.
Quick break
Lana: Just a quick break here to remind you that today's episode has a raffle for Phyllis's books, Southern folk medicine, healing traditions for the Appalachian fields and forests.
To participate in this raffle, please head over to https://ko-fi.com/plantloveradio and comment on the right post.
And now back to our conversation.
So at one point you were talking about constitutions and the aspect of astrology and how there are some similarities, but also differences. Could you talk a little about that?
Folk astrology/The Signs
Phyllis: Yeah. So Southern folk medicine uses folk astrology which is based on the Zodiac man. And this came over to us via Europe through the Greeks. So this is based on Greek astrology.
Lana: Great.
Phyllis: So their folk medicine, it's mostly based on Sun and Moon. It's pair of opposites. So, the old practitioners didn't really care what your houses were in, what your Mars was in. They wanted to know what your Sun was and what your Moon was, as the two big things cause these were the pair of opposites. We're in our moon sign, generally two and a half days a month and we're in our sun sign which is our birth sign, maybe 22 or 23 days a year.
So if you're a Leo, you only have these many days. So, overall we're in our moon signs over the year. We spend more days in our moon than we do in our sun, but it's pretty close. That's pretty close. So the folk practitioners of course we planted by the moon.
When I learned, astrology, I didn't realize it was astrology for like 20 years. Well, because I've never read an astrology book. It was the signs. And so she would call me. I'd say like, the signs are in the knees. It's time to plant this. And so I learned the signs by body parts. And then later I was like, Oh my God, this is astrology. And did some investigation.
I had been taught with Zodiac man, but only body parts. Then I was put a sign to it. So the days you're in your moon sign, it could be a stronger time for you where you fight things off more, or it can be a weaker time for you. You'd be more aware and take more care.
Lana: And so when you're talking about the specific organ system, you are not talking about the constellation. You're not saying that like the Taurus corresponds to your throat type of thing, or you are talking about that?
Phyllis: Well, it's more like it's more the body parts.
Lana: So you were kind of starting was Aries is on the top and the Pisces is on the bottom and going through the body and okay.
Phyllis: So anything in the head is Aries, anything in the neck, including the thyroid and anything in part of the chest is Taurus, the arms and the lungs are Gemini, the breast and the stomach are Cancer, the back is Leo. The small intestines and large intestines is Virgo right, Libra is the kidneys, which is called the rains,
Lana: okay.
Phyllis: and Scorpio is the secret places or reproductive, Sagittarius are the hips and the thighs, the legs knees are Capricorn, the front of the legs are Aquarius. and the ankle is in the feet are Pisces.
Lana: And so healers would look at these different signs and make their determinations or the
Phyllis: Yeah, well, I'll give you this as an example, and this is absolutely true. I had a client, who brought her son to see me and he was a soccer player and he always got hurt in his hips, in thighs right in that connection place , was in caps. He was always in pain.
I made some herbal recommendations, but just out of curiosity, I always ask my clients their birthday because I can always look up. I don't need to know the time. I can always look up the sun and the moon. He was a Sagittarian with an Aquarius moon. According to this can be weak points for you, which for the last four years of playing soccer, you found to be true. That doesn't mean you can't play soccer, but that means you're going to have to be attentive, strengthen the muscles, stretch them out, be aware that this can be a weak point for you. And so knowing that he asked his coach to change his position, he totally went with it. And so that he was a midfielder and didn't have to do a vast amount of running and he had a really great college soccer career keeping that mind.
Getting started with South folk medicine
Lana: Very very interesting. There were a lot of different herbal remedies that you discuss and you describe in great detail based on all these elements and based on the taste. How does someone who is just starting, learn about it? How do they go about this?
Phyllis: Well, That's a really good question. Because in Southern folk medicine, one thing I think is very unique is that we are made of all four elements. We're not just made of one. So your constitution is all four. And all four are going to impact you. You may have one that kind of leads or is a higher number than the others, but they're all a part of who you are.
So when we work on taste, and this was an exercise actually doing my herb school regularly and actually did it at a scientific conference where I was the only non PhD person there presenting. And so I made an herbal tea red clover, spearmint, mullen, and chickweed - four herbs.
And I chose us for herbs because they were very benign and almost nobody is allergic to those. I made a decoction, which is where in Southern folk medicine, we actually bring it to a boil, cut the heat down, simmer it for about 15 minutes with a lid off. It's a Southern decoction. And so I made it a decoction and then passed like a half a cup of round to every scientist in the room. And I said, this is a common experience. We're going to all drink at the same time. So you get your cup, hold onto it don't drink. And so there are like 45 or 50 people in the room. They all got it.
And I said, okay, have a seat. And then I said, who tasted sweet. Raise your hand, who tasted sour. And where'd you Hand, bitter, salty and then I said, why didn't you all taste the same thing? And it was kind of a revelation to them that there were that many people whose primary tastes that came to them was one of the four in, they all didn't taste the same.
So when you taste an herb, you might taste something different than your best friend who tastes the same tea. Right. If we think about bitter, salty, sweet and sour, we just think about those four tastes.
So our constitution, plus the state of our health at the moment can bring that out. So, I taste the herbs, make notes, and then take a second step because then the secondary taste will come in.
Lana: Very interesting. What I really loved in your book is that you actually have a questionnaire that allows the reader to figure out what their primary taste is.
Phyllis: Right.
I do. yeah, buy my book and take the test.
Lana: Absolutely. I will definitely include the book. And I'm hoping our audience will enjoy it as much as I did. I wanted to ask you once again, for someone who's listening to us and thinking, I definitely want to learn more how would they go about this? What are some of your favorite resources?
Thoughts on resources
Phyllis: Sure. As far as I'm aware, my book is the only one that all the information has come together. And as I said earlier, it's was always passed down orally. I did a vast amount of research for the book. Took seven years to write it. I just researched, researched. The one I'm working on now be done a lot quicker.
Lana: Okay.
Phyllis: I found a tremendous amount of documented research on the taste and the binary system that I've been taught, all this in the sociological section at the university where somebody in the sociology department had gone out and interviewed a folk herbalist and he had written it down... Best sources. You're not going to find this and under the herbal books, except my book. You're going to have to dig.
Teaching offerings
Lana: Okay. That's to know. Thank you. This is a good time for us to talk a little bit more of what you teach and where you teach. You have Appalachian Center for Natural Health, and you have three programs. And so there is a family herbalist, community herbalists, and herbal practitioners. Could you talk to us a little bit about the differences between the three?
Phyllis: Okay. So, and I'm going to back up. So when I was at Clayton college, I devised this three step system of herbal study that now every herb school does it, but I started in at Clayton and we were first. So it kind of set the standard for tiers of learning.
So the family herbalist is all about what you might need to know just to take care of yourself, your partners and your kids. Just basic coughs, colds, flu, basic medicine making, common disorders that happen in families.
So that's what that's about and learning about body systems and how your body works. So, I've really connected back to physiology, structure and function of the body. So a good language to use in talking to medical professionals is physiology. And so I've incorporated that into my folk medicine approach.
On the second level, a community herbalist is what you would need to know to be able to go out within your community, whatever it is. And so now we bring in the endocrine system, what do hormones do and how do they affect the body system. It's not enough to say I'm constipated. I can come up with easy six or seven reasons why somebody can be constipated. So part of being a good herbalist is, as I said earlier, being a good detective. Well, without that hormonal, influence coming in you're missing a key, a neurotransmitter, reproductive hormones. So they all come in and that's the second year. So we take it deeper and herbs and approaches that help with that.
Then the third year, which I call the herbal practitioner when I was at Clayton, I called it master herbalist is like, let's get into the disorders - auto immune diseases, multiple sclerosis that really hard and more unusual disorders. We have a lot of clinic, so offer a free clinic people come in, or they call online, set up online appointments so that my students who want to set up a practice or get out into the world with information, have some practice working with people before they leave. And right now it's residential, but I'm putting an online format together and I'm going to be offering this online.
Lana: That's wonderful. Thank you. And I will definitely include all the links for our audience to check out the offering. So thank you. Who, who are some of the good candidates for your program?
Phyllis: Well locally, I have a lot of nurses, and nurse practitioners, massage therapist, who wants to kind of expand their practices, any allied health care professional. It extends their practice and from my viewpoint, now they're creating a bridge too, cause they've learned all this traditional stuff. The other thing we do is we go out in the woods and identify plants too. The other group that I think is a candidate is anybody that wants to be healthier, and wants to learn about herbs for themselves and family.
Lana: That's wonderful. Thank you. We spend quite a bit of time talking about the Southern folk medicine. And we're coming to the end of this conversation, but I have a couple of more questions for you. So one of them is how can our listeners learn more from you and about you? So perhaps either your website or social media. And then my last question is do you have any words of wisdom or any parting thoughts either about Southern folk medicine or anything else that you want to share?
Phyllis: Okay. Well, folks can find me at my website, which is just my name Phyllis with my middle initial D, https://PhyllisDLight.com. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram.
Partying words of wisdom. I just feel like life is too short to be sick most of it. And unfortunately, I think we've come to this time period where conventional medicine they're at a crossroads, just not able to longterm effectively deal with chronic illnesses. And so people spend huge chunks of their life in poor quality health. What if you could live to be 90 and just be healthy and active all the way to the end and you didn't experience such a demise, some pain and ill health. Whether you seek help from somebody like me or whether you start reading and investigating on your own. I'm not saying don't go to the doctor, we all need to go sometimes, but I'm saying in conjunction with that, how about learning how to eat healthy, not drinking so much alcohol, non-smoking so many cigarettes, or quitting both of those. Doing moderation on how about exercise? When's the last time you walked?
I know this is about herbs, but it's not just about herbs is our health. And that's why I say the Appalachian center for natural health. We have to look at the big picture, which includes our lifestyle factors. Herbs can only do so much. It all depends on what kind of foundation we have, how much help we get. Look at the bigger picture and try to be healthier people, healthier people make better decisions and are better citizens.
Lana: Phyllis. Thank you. So, so very much. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Phyllis: Thank you. bye bye.
Thank you for listening!
Lana: Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you have enjoyed this conversation with Phyllis D Light For links and resources mentioned in today's episode, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/ 75.
Are you listening to Plant Love Radio for the first time, please subscribe to the podcast to seamlessly, get future episodes downloaded to your device. I'm so thrilled to introduce you to too many amazing guests and topics. And of course, nothing says thank you better than sharing this show with a friend who might enjoy it and giving us a five star rating and review. Thank you so much in advance.
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The music you hear in the introduction was written by a neighbor of mine, David Scholl and it's called Something about Cat - my deepest gratitude to Bill Gilligan for this opportunity to play it.
Thanks again for being here today. I really appreciate you. Till the next time, thank you for loving plants and planting love!

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Image courtesy of Phyllis D. Light

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