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Finding The Better Cure: Optimizing Health Through Herbs And Chinese Medicine With Chloe Weber

BYW 31 | Chinese Medicine

 

Chloe Weber believes that there is a better cure to diseases than shoving down the symptoms with tablets. Rooted in millennia of tradition, Chinese medicine focuses on healing the whole person, not just the disease. As the CEO of Radical Roots, Chloe fulfills her why of “better way” by helping people discover how this ancient body of wisdom unlock the secrets to better health.

In this episode, Chloe joins Dr. Gary Sanchez to discuss how Chinese medicine looks at the underlying patterns beneath the disharmony in your entire being that causes the disease to manifest in your physical body. In Chinese medicine, curing disease requires a deeper look to pinpoint the source of excessive stress in your life and eliminate it.

Do you want to learn more about finding the better, longer-lasting cure for what ails you? You have come to the right place! Tune in and learn from Chloe’s expertise in Chinese medicine.

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Finding The Better Cure: Optimizing Health Through Herbs And Chinese Medicine With Chloe Weber

If you’re a regular reader, you know that we talk about one of the nine why’s and then we bring on somebody with that why. You can see how their why has played out in their life. We’re going to be talking about the why of better way. If this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You constantly seek better ways to do everything from the most mundane task of brushing your teeth to improving the rocket fuel that powers the space shuttle. You can’t stop yourself. You take virtually anything and want to improve it, make it better and share your improvement with the world. You invent things and take what has already been invented and improve that too. You constantly ask yourself the question, “What if we try this differently? What if we did this another way?”

You contribute to the world with better processes, better systems and operate under the motto, “Often pleased, never satisfied.” You are excellent at associating and taking from one industry or discipline and applying it to another. Always with the aim of improving something. You generally operate with a high level of energy because after all that too is a better way. I’ve got a great guest for you. You’re going to love her. Her name is Chloe Weber. She developed an interest in public health and medicine after being diagnosed with cutaneous leishmaniasis in high school. As one of the first cases diagnosed in Costa Rica, Chloe was drawn to study ecology and evolutionary biology at CU Boulder, where she began to understand how diseases evolve along with us and the deep connection between humans and our environment.

Chloe was drawn to Chinese medicine as a way to address public health issues. She graduated with a Masters of Oriental Medicine from Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder and spent time studying in Heilongjiang University Hospital in China. After graduating, Chloe co-founded a nonprofit sliding-scale walk-in Chinese or a clinic called Urban Herbs. When Chloe’s son, Remy, was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating genetic disorder, she decided to study Integrative Neurology and Functional Medicine extensively and has motivated her to find ways to help children with neurodevelopmental issues and seizures. Chloe is the CEO and Co-Founder of Radical Roots, a Chinese herb company on a mission to make superior hemp and herb products and Remy’s Revenge resource website. Chloe, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It’s an honor to be here. I’m excited to chat with you.

This is going to be fun. I know I pronounced some of those words incorrectly. First of all, let’s get that straight. You were diagnosed with what?

Cutaneous leishmaniasis. It’s a parasitic disease that spread through sand flies. I was lucky enough that I went on this outward bound trip to Costa Rica. I came back to the States and I had these weird bug bites on my arm and a couple of my face. They kept getting worse and worse. Ultimately, they got biopsied, sent to the CDC. The CDC knew me by my first name when I was fifteen, so that was a cool little thing for me to get. I had this crazy parasitic disease. It’s common in other parts of the world but had never been found in Costa Rica. It’s not something you see in the States. I was forced onto chemotherapy for a while and had to do home instruction. It went a little crazy. Overall, it was an important learning lesson for me in my evolution as a human.

Where were you born? Take us a little bit on your journey because it’s a fascinating journey.

I was born in New York. I’m a Brooklyn girl, born and raised. That’s something I’m proud of. I was always a soccer player. I was always the captain of the soccer team. I always loved playing with kids. I went to summer camp, did the whole thing and was adventurous growing up. That’s how I convinced my parents with lots of begging and crying to send me to Costa Rica on this outward bound trip. That was when I was about fourteen. My sophomore year of high school was spent in home instruction dealing with the ramifications of this tropical disease. It was an interesting thing for me because it was this crazy juxtaposition of going to Costa Rica where I was blown away by the natural beauty, by people living in remote circumstances without toilets and running water. They were happier than anybody I’d ever met in America, to going home, coming back to the States, being sick and having this crazy next part of that journey.

It was an interesting dichotomy. It shaped how I started looking at life because it was like, “If this one girl from Brooklyn can end up with a rare tropical disease on a first name basis with the CDC, we don’t know what’s ahead of us.” We never know what’s guaranteed. Tomorrow is certainly not guaranteed. That was something that I learned at that time and that’s something that I’ve taken with me every day ever since. Through that, I went to college at CU Boulder. I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I was fascinated with the fact that due to our interactions with the environment, diseases were spreading like leishmaniasis into new environments and affecting different people. It was interesting how global warming and how our actions were affecting the spread of disease.

That’s what I studied and who knows what you go into to work for when you’re done? I bumbled around and got into Chinese medicine, which was a fortunate stumble into that field. It’s been one of the great loves of my life and one of the greatest honors that I could have to practice this medicine that’s been handed down through thousands of generations and millions of healers who have given so much to the health of our society.

See everything in the world in a different way. Click To Tweet

Take us to that moment where you said, “I’ve got to get into Chinese medicine.” How did that happen?

I had done acupuncture before for quitting smoking and for allergies when I was younger. I knew a little bit about it. My parents were hippies, so I’ve had some experience. I wasn’t scared of it but I wanted to go back to school for public health. The problem with public health was that I also wanted to find a better way. There are all these public health issues. I went to a hospital and I was volunteering there. All I was seeing was they were putting Band-Aids on things. “Here’s a medication. It’s going to cover up this issue but then you’re going to have these side effects. We’re going to get another Band-Aid. We’re going to put that on top of there and keep going.” I love Western medicine. I think it has its place and its strengths but it also has its weaknesses.

Public health is amazing and something that I’ve always been interested in but it doesn’t give me the hands on experience of working with people, seeing what I’m doing and how that affects a person. I also like people in general. That was something I wanted to have. I stumbled into the Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Denver. It’s like Hogwarts School of Magic. It’s completely bonkers. You go in there and there are all these Chinese herbs everywhere. I started looking into Chinese herbs and realizing what an incredible system of medicine it is, how it’s customizable pharmaceuticals, how safe and how effective they are. Acupuncture, I had already had and I’d known how powerful it was. I signed up on a whim. It’s been an incredible journey ever since.

There was no like, “I’ve got this problem. That’s why I’ve got to go into this to look at Chinese herbs.” It was like, “That’s interesting.” It seems like it might be a better way to customize what we’re doing instead of giving everybody the same thing.

I looked at the Chinese herbs in particular and I was like, “This is a better way of doing medicine.” If we’re having symptoms, if we have a disease, if we’re having headaches, if we’re having menstrual cramps, that’s our body telling us something. It didn’t make any sense to me to shove those symptoms down. That’s not how the body works. Chinese medicine honors the natural ecology of the body, supports everybody as an individual and respects everybody’s individual differences, challenges, strengths and weaknesses.

Most of us are not going to be going to Chinese medicine school. Tell us what it was like going to school for that.

Chinese medicine school is much more rigorous than I realized when I signed up. I’m not going to lie. It’s essentially the course equivalent of 4.5 master’s degrees in three years. They have us studying like crazy and on top of that, you’re learning a lot of stuff in Chinese. A lot of it is outside of our typical Western paradigm. We’re talking a lot about yin and yang, the five elements, these herbs and how they work together. They have a whole different language for talking about health, wellness and life. A lot of it is based on Taoism, which is something that I’ve always resonated with. I remember one of my teachers for the first year. He said, “For the first year you just study and memorize. One day it’s going to click. You’ll see everything in the world in a different way. You’ll understand all of it.” I remember being like, “This dude is crazy. What are we doing here?”

One day, it all fell into place. I was like, “No wonder I have these tendencies, these allergies and these things.” Those all fit together in a pattern of disharmony that’s been described in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. It is an incredible system but it is not easy to study. Herbs were hard for me to study because you learn them in Pinyin, which is the Chinese name. Luckily they expect us to be able to get the tone right because I am tone deaf when it comes to Chinese. There’s no way I can do it. Learning hundreds of herbs and herbal formulas in Chinese was so hard for me. I think that’s one of the reasons I became an avid herbalist because I’m not used to having a struggle with anything. I got stubborn and figured out how to master it. I’ll be working on mastering it for the rest of my life to get good at it.

How many Chinese herbs are there?

BYW 31 | Chinese Medicine
Chinese Medicine: Chinese medicine honors the natural ecology of the body, supports everybody as an individual, and respects everybody’s individual differences, challenges, strengths, and weaknesses.

 

I had a sliding-scale herb clinic. We would carry normally about 350, 400 herbs at a time.

Take us through what goes on in your mind when you are evaluating somebody who’s getting migraine headaches. You’re going to take them through figuring out what’s going on with them and finding a better way for them to get healthy. What goes on in your mind?

In Chinese medicine, we are looking at the underlying patterns beneath the disharmony that you’re seeing. In the example of migraines, one common pattern of migraine is stress. In Chinese medicine, stress is correlated with stagnation within the body. Things aren’t flowing freely, so you’ll see somebody who’s sighing a lot, who’s getting irritable. It’s like classic PMS is the stress stagnation. We call it Liver Qi Stagnation. In that pattern, the stress can build up and then cause some irritation to the head and cause some migraines because the energy is inappropriately rising to the head in a way that’s it’s not supposed to. We can look at that underlying stress. We can talk to you about what’s going on, what are the triggers, how’s your digestion, how’s your sleep. We’re looking at every aspect of a person’s life and vitality. What are you eating? What are you drinking? How are you feeling? Do you like your job? All of it.

Stress might be one of the things that’s contributing to migraines. Hormones are another common thing that are contributing to migraines. Those are all different patterns of disharmony within Chinese medicine. They can be translated into Western medicine but the way that we view it and the way that we look at the whole system together in terms of your spirit, your mind, your body, your diet, your exercise, all of it is different than Western medicine. What we’ll do is we’ll see what’s out of balance. We’re looking at the different elements of the body. It’s always fun trying to explain Chinese medicine. We look at the body as a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Years ago, when Chinese medicine was developed, they were describing pathogenic factors within the body through elemental descriptions. We talked about wind in the body. Wind in Chinese medicine can be an external invasion like a cold or flu. It can be a ticker, a tremor or epilepsy, some neurological disharmony. We’ll talk about phlegm, which could be a buildup of phlegm in the body or coldness, dampness, heat. We’ve talked about different pathogenic factors. We talk about different elements and how those are working within the body. It’s all looking to get the body back into homeostasis, if that explanation makes any sense.

It’s like there’s a set on the thermometer that you want your house to be, 70 degrees, and something’s keeping it at 75 or 65. We’ll figure out what that is. How do you know which herbs to give somebody to make that happen if you’ve got 350 choices? That’s mind-numbing to me.

We study a lot but we do herbal formulas. The strength of our medicine is that it’s not just one herb, one ailment. It’s the combination of these herbs, how they’re working together to support you and what’s going on in your body. We have classical formulas. For migraines, if that’s coming from stress, you might use a formula Free and Easy Wanderer Jia-Wei-Xiao-Yao-San, which is classically used to move the Liver Qi, alleviate stress and then also support digestive function. I think it has 6 or 7 herbs that are used to move the qi, support the blood flow and digestion. From that classical formula, we can also say they need more of this herb or I want to add in some other herbs that are going to anchor it because they’re having severe migraines and we need to get this done. We can tailor these classical formulas to whatever’s going on.

This became personally important to you later on or maybe before you went to school and with your son. Tell us about your son.

My mission when I was in school was always to start a sliding-scale Chinese herbal clinic because everybody knows about acupuncture in America but people don’t understand the strength, the value and the beauty of Chinese herbs. That became my obsession. I wanted everybody to have access to this because it’s so easy. You can come in. I can do an evaluation on you in twenty minutes and have you go home with your own medicine that’s going to help you with little risk of any side effects. That was my mission. I started Urban Herbs a couple of months after graduating from Chinese medicine school and I had my son two months later. Remy was around ten months when we got referred to early intervention because he wasn’t sitting well yet and he wasn’t rolling. He wasn’t hitting some of the milestones.

At twelve months, he was referred to genetics and neurology. You know it’s a shit show if you’re being sent there. It was clear that it was a bigger deal. I left that business and took Remy back home to Brooklyn and started spending two years where we were searching for answers for him trying to get a diagnosis. He was doing twenty hours of early intervention therapies a week. I was doing another twenty hours of therapy with him a week. We were going to osteopaths, cranial, sacral, developmental pediatricians, geneticists and every freaking doctor that you could possibly imagine. Finally, he was diagnosed with a super rare genetic disorder when he was 2.5 or about 3 and it’s called STXBP1.

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This disorder is so rare that A, it doesn’t even get a name. It’s just named after the mutated gene. That’s always fun. Also, the doctors are like, “There are 400 kids in the world. We don’t have anything for you.” This is a child who has significant challenges. He’s got severe epilepsy. He’s got a cognitive disability, ataxia, apraxia, Parkinsonian-like tremors. He’s nonverbal. He started walking when he’s almost seven. When you get that diagnosis, as a mom and herbalist, I was like, “What are my options here?” Seizure meds don’t seem to help many of the children with his disorder. Seizure meds also dull neural connectivity, which is not something I’m eager to do on my three-year-old, who’s starting to learn how to crawl after thousands and thousands of hours of therapy.

I started looking into hemp, CBD and cannabis medicine for epilepsy. I started trying all different products on the market. Some of them were good. Some of them were not good at all. I started learning more and more about it as an herbalist and stomped my feet for a while. I even emailed a couple of the big companies offering to help them out write formulas for them for free. As an herbalist, I wanted to use the Chinese herbs to potentiate the actions and make it stronger for hemp medicine in particular. If you have good quality CBD, it’s an expensive supplement because it’s not easy to grow.

There are a lot of headaches and a lot that you have to go through in order to keep a CBD company alive, which I wasn’t aware of before starting one. To me, the beauty of herbal medicine is using these herbs together. This is what thousands of years of Chinese medicine has taught me. Let’s combine these actions and make it stronger. I stomped my feet long enough and decided finally that I would make my own company and create a superior supplement line for kids like Remy and adults like me who are under extreme stress.

How are you able to deal with all of that? That seems overwhelming to have that many things going on and no answers.

It was impressively challenging. It’s been a crazy trip with Rem. I think I’m lucky because I had the experience of having leishmaniasis when I was younger and I think that it taught me. As I said, nothing’s promised for tomorrow and having to learn that lesson when it comes to your child because Remy, due to his seizures is at risk of leaving me sooner than most kids, which is something that I’m still working on. Having to process that also gives you a certain amount of freedom in your life in an odd way. If you realize the depth of not having tomorrow guaranteed, then why wouldn’t you go as big as you can possibly go? Why wouldn’t you love as hard as you can possibly love? Why don’t you throw yourself at it because that’s what’s going to happen tomorrow anyway?

As hard as it was and as hard as it has been, at the end of the day, I have the most beautiful little boy. He deserves all the love in the world. He also deserves to have a happy mom. I do the best that I can to honor that. Some days, I’m on point and some days, it’s a hell of a lot harder. We’ve gotten through hopefully some of the tougher times. I’ve also gotten a lot of help along the way. I’ve taken Remy all over the world. I take him to a neurologist in Ecuador for a month twice a year. I take him to The Family Hope Center in Philadelphia, who I recommend for every single family with a child with any learning disability. It’s also been an exciting learning experience for me. I feel like I’m uniquely primed for this challenge. In some way, we were well paired together. I try and live up to that honor.

In the middle of all of that, you started Radical Roots. It makes sense. It’s a better way. Tell us all about Radical Roots. What is Radical Roots?

As I was saying, I wanted to combine the Chinese herbs with the highest quality of medicine that I could. I found a farmer in Longmont, Colorado, who does next to no-till farming techniques. He rotates eight cover crops. It’s honoring the ecology of Colorado. It’s helping build topsoil. It’s super clean, obsessive and lovingly grown hemp. The guy even goes up to the mountains, gets mythical healing spring water and brings it down on a truck to water the plants. It’s insane. I wrote Chinese herbal formulas. There are different patterns of disharmony that lead to one outcome like in migraine. What I did was I looked the five main things that people are looking to have medicine for.

One is neurological conditions. That formula is Remy’s Revenge. I wrote a formula that’s focused on calming the wind, calming that static in the brain in Chinese medicine. That was one of the formulas. The other things that people are often using hemp medicine for pain management. I wrote a formula that’s focused on pain management based on the herbal functions of Chinese medicine. Also, there’s Western research on all of these herbs as well. It’s not just woo-woo goodness. There’s plenty of research behind all of them. We did one for anxiety and stress. With anxiety and stress, it could be that you’re working too much. It could be that you’re too worried and your mind’s going all the time.

BYW 31 | Chinese Medicine
Chinese Medicine: There’s no better medical system in the world than Chinese herbal medicine.

 

We looked at those different patterns and tried to write formulas that were going to support all of those patterns in a safe way so that you could take something off the shelf. Customizing the herbal formulas is always my favorite way to do it but we also need to scale it so that more people can have access to it. That’s what we did for the line. We’ve expanded and done a couple of new formulas that don’t have CBD in them to support people who aren’t able to do that. We do have low levels of THC in all of our formulas because I believe the whole plant medicine is far superior and the THC is an important co-factor in order to potentiate the actions of the hemp. We don’t have any THC-free CBD products. I wanted to make some herbal products for people who get drug tested or who are uncomfortable using hemp products.

For the readers, how Chloe and I got together was my office is in a building called The Optimum Building. The gentleman that owns this building is a guy named Matt Finkelstein. He’s a better way guy like us as well but he’s me at least on steroids. He switched the words from better way to way better. If it’s not way better, he doesn’t want it in everything that he does. I’ll have him on the show here in a little bit. Everything in this building has to be the best of the best. He has Radical Roots here. I was looking at the Radical Roots and then I talked to Mikayla, the gal that brought them in. She’s the one that connected me to you, Chloe. I’ve been taking your products and I love them. I’m taking the Immortal All-Stars and I’m also taking Flow State. What are those?

First of all, thank you. I love our products too. The level of detail that I’ve gone into with these products is psychotic. It’s a complete honor to me as a practitioner and as a human for people to trust me enough to take the products that I create. In terms of Chinese medicine, in terms of being a practitioner, in terms of being a mom, I take that honor seriously. There’s never a time that I will ever cut a corner when it comes to my business. We did a biohacking line for Bulletproof because we were going to be in the conference and all this stuff. Immortal All-Stars is one of those. That one doesn’t have any hemp in it.

I was looking to make an anti-aging formula because that’s a big biohacking thing. Also we’re all so run down and deficient at this point. That formula is great. It’s got a reishi in it, which is incredible for immune health. It’s got He Shou Wu, which is known to blacken the hair. It’s infamous for that. It’s got a bunch of other mushrooms that help with immune support but it helps with energy. It’s got a little bit of ginseng. It’s an overall tonic. It’s going to give you that power to get you through that day. It’s going to keep you feeling your best day in and day out for as long as you can. To me, it’s not about living forever. It’s about making sure that I’m optimizing every day and living my life to the fullest. That formula packs a punch. It’s amazing how strong they are.

Flow State is one of my favorite formulas. That’s based on the formula I referenced earlier, Jia-wei-xiao-yao-san. It’s called Free and Easy Wanderer. It’s one of the most commonly prescribed Chinese herbal formulas in all of history. That one helps alleviate stress. It’s encouraging the free flow of Qi and blood throughout the body. It also supports digestion. In Chinese medicine, stress and digestion are always on that same axis, which is the same in Western medicine. They’re just finally learning that. You’re never going to have something that’s going to go on in your stress that’s not going to, in some way, affect your digestion and vice versa. That formula has been shown to have powerful anxiolytic property so it helps with anxiety. It has neuroprotective properties.

I added some herbs that increased BDNF, which is Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. It helps your brain grow, get stronger and be more effective. That one is one of my favorite formulas. We have that in CBD and without CBD. I’ve been having fun because I have all the products but I get to mix and match them, which is fun for me. Immortal All-Stars sometimes, I’ll take with our Complete Spectrum hemp because I want the hemp but I want the Immortal All-Stars. I get the best of both worlds. Flow State is for stress but sometimes, if my stress is affecting my digestion more, then I’ll add Middle Management and take that with it. If I’m more tired, then I’ll take that with Revive or with the Immortal All-Stars. It’s fun to get to mix and match a little bit.

Your level of detail is borderline psychotic for the products that you make and the way you formulate them. Tell us a little bit about that. Give us an example. What do you mean? You have a perpetual smile on your face. Every time I talk to you, you’re smiling as you’re talking. For those of you that cannot see Chloe, she’s always smiling as she’s talking. There’s something going on back there. You’ve got some knowledge of the way you’re doing this that we don’t have. Fill us in a little bit on this level of detail. There has got to be a better way.

I would say the secret sauce is Chinese herbal medicine. I will always bow down to the fact that this is a continual medical lineage that has gone on for thousands of years. To me, there’s no better medical system in the world than Chinese herbal medicine. Trust me. I’ve been all over the world. I checked out every medical system I can find. For me, the main secret sauce is the Chinese herbs but also the people who grow the herbs. All of our herbs, especially the Chinese herbs, are psychotically tested. We make sure that there are no heavy metals, pesticides or chemicals in them. We get them organic as often as possible, which is most of the time and the loving care that our farmers put into our hemp in growing that.

I have a manufacturer who is an absolute genius. He lives up in the mountains in Colorado and he does an alchemical spagyric extraction technique. He tinctures the herbs. He takes the herbs and burns them. From the ashes, he’s able to take the salts and minerals and bring them back into the tincture. Cosmically, it’s recombining the body and the spirit of the plant and then chemically, it’s creating all these crazy chemical reactions. To me, the whole plant medicine is so important. We can look at the pharmacological constituents. We can look up all the pharmacological actions of all of these herbs. The magic is one you’re using them as whole plants. It’s like you can get all the different ingredients of a cake together but that doesn’t make a cake unless you mix them and bake it. You have these whole plant medicines. It makes it so incredibly powerful and effective and then making sure that they’re super safe.

It blows my mind. These herbs have changed my life. I started the company for Remy because I wanted to make him a formula to stop his seizures. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to stop Remy’s seizures or to help any child with epilepsy. There’s nothing more heartbreaking in the world than watching a child go through a seizure. I live in that world. I have so many friends whose children have severe epilepsy. If I can help one family get a better night’s sleep or have some reduction in seizures, I would do anything for that. I started it for him and for all these other kids. I also found myself and I came back to life through some of these herbs also. They’re so powerful. I do believe they are a better way.

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What you see with most people with the why a better way is they see something they think is better. They try it out on themselves and find out whether it’s better or not. When they find out that it is, then they share it. Have you tried most or all of your products on yourself?

Yes, I take them all of the time. It’s ridiculous. I love my life. It’s challenging. I get to study Chinese medicine. I get to do what I love every day. Some of the things about running a business are not my favorite. I’m never going to be an operations person. It’s never going to be my strong suit but I love being able to create. I love being able to get to talk to people who are pushing boundaries and innovating. I love getting to play with my son. He’s a riot. I’m the worst salesperson in the world. I could not sell something if my life was dependent on it. I can’t lie. These herbal products are amazing, so I use them all of the time.

Last question, what is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received or the best piece of advice that you’ve ever given?

A piece of advice that I often give is I’m lucky that I do not have the perfectionist gene but I think people get caught up in the big picture of things. One of the things I often tell other people, particularly parents or people who are struggling to make big headway in their health is something is better than nothing. I think we get so caught up, wanting things to be perfect and doing the whole thing. In Chinese medicine, when I see patients and they’re like, “I have to revamp my whole diet, change my whole life and do all of this.” I’m like, “Yes, that would be ideal. However, why don’t we start with adding a ten-minute walk in every day and adding an extra cup of water a day? I think we can move imperfectly in the direction of our dreams without having to have it all figured out.” That’s one piece of advice.

It takes a lot of pressure off, doesn’t it?

We have enough pressure in society.

Chloe, what is next for you? If there’s people that are reading this and they want to connect with you, maybe they want to come see you because I think you mentioned something about you want to go back to having some type of a clinic. What’s next for you and then how can people connect with you?

I should be opening a clinic here in Boulder. I am going to also be launching a podcast which we’ll go into focused on the health of our children and the deterioration of that. Something is better than nothing but the reality that our children are in a desperate place. One out of six kids has a developmental disability. One out of nine kids has ADHD. One out of 32 has autism. We can wait around for Western medicine to come up with a one-to-one correlation but that’s never going to happen. I want to help people realize that we all need to take action in our homes and in our communities, start finding a better way in terms of health for our children. I’ll be launching that, playing with herbs and more products. People can reach me. I have the resource website, RemysRevenge.com. That’s what I’ll do the show through and then RadicalRootsHerbs.com. People can email me at Chloe@RadicalRootsHerbs.com if they have any questions.

I wanted that to be the last question but there’s something popped into my head that I forgot that I wanted to ask you about. I was told that I’m supposed to show you my tongue. What’s the story with that? Mikayla said, “She’s going to want to see your tongue.” Tell us a little bit about that.

BYW 31 | Chinese Medicine
Chinese Medicine: The main secret sauce is the Chinese herbs but also the people who grow the herbs. All of the company’s herbs, especially the Chinese herbs, are psychotically tested.

 

That’s funny. I’ve never even asked Mikayla to see her tongue. Maybe I have. The tongue is internal but it’s external. It’s a way to see the internal state of the body externally. From the tongue, we’re able to tell a lot about how your state of health is. I’ll do mine, so I don’t put you on the spot. If you look at my tongue, I have a crack down the middle of it. That’s a stomach crack so I have a lot of food allergies, which is true. On the side, you’ll see there like teeth marks. It looks like a scallop. In Chinese medicine, we call that Spleen-Qi Deficiency. You’ll often see that people are studying a lot, worrying a lot, overthinking a lot. The tip of my tongue is typically a little bit red, so that’s a little bit of heart heat from stress and juggling 752 million things at one time.

We can learn a lot from your tongue. We also take pulses in Chinese medicine. Based on how the frequency of the pulses and the different qualities of the pulses. Some practitioners are amazing and they can tell you stuff back to your birth from your pulse. I am by no means that pulse expert. Maybe one day we’ll be. I don’t have the attention span to get that good at it. I’d rather just ask questions. In Chinese medicine, we have a lot of interesting ways of assessing the health of the body. Tongue and pulse are some of my favorites.

I remember one of the times I first got into Chinese herbs. I wandered into a Chinese herbs shop in Chinatown in Brooklyn. I had watched a TV show where somebody went in. The guy looked at their tongue and their pulse and they gave him a bag of herbs. I went into this legit Chinese shop and stood there. I was waiting for somebody to ask me to see my tongue. They clearly only spoke Chinese and I clearly did not. I was debating and shoving my tongue. I was like, “I’m going to leave awkwardly.” I think I bought some ginseng and left.

Chloe, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us. I have a daughter in Denver and a daughter in Fort Collins. When I come up there, I’m going to come see you. We can do this whole tongue thing and make sure that I’m okay.

It sounds good. I’d love to see you.

Thanks. I appreciate you being here.

Thanks, Gary.

It was time for our last segment in that is Guess the Why. What we do is get somebody that’s famous that we think we know what their why is. We are going to talk about Tom Brady. Everybody knows Tom Brady from The Super Bowl and from playing football. What do you think Tom Brady’s why is? I have a sense of what I think it is. I think that Tom Brady’s why is to find a better way. I’m not saying that because that is my why and I want to be like Tom Brady. When you look at his life and you look at how he’s found better ways to stay young, to stay healthy, to stay active, to stay fit, to stay playing football. He’s aged and he’s still playing at the highest level. He just won The Super Bowl. He has found better ways to do what everybody else is doing. He’s implemented them and he shares them. To me, that’s all about a better way.

I’d love to hear your opinion. Let us know. What do you think about Tom Brady’s why? Is it better way or is it something else? Thank you for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code Podcast 50. You can get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using because that will help more people learn about the why and discover their why. Our goal is to help one billion people discover, make decisions and live based on their why. Thank you.

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About Chloe Weber

BYW 31 | Chinese Medicine

Chloe Weber L.Ac, MSOM developed an interest in public health and medicine after being diagnosed with Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in high school. As one of the first cases diagnosed in Costa Rica, Chloe was drawn to study Ecology and Evolutionary biology at CU Boulder where she began to understand how diseases evolve along with us and the deep connection between humans and our environment.

Eventually, Chloe was drawn to Chinese medicine as a way to address public health issues. She graduated with a Masters of Oriental Medicine from Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder and spent time studying at Heilongjiang University Hospital in Harbin, China.

After graduating, Chloe co-founded a non-profit sliding-scale walk-in Chinese herb clinic called Urban Herbs. When Chloe’s son, Remy, was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating genetic disorder (STXBP1) she decided to extensively study integrative neurology and functional medicine and has motivated her to find ways to help children with neuro-developmental issues and seizures.

Chloe is currently the CEO and Co-founder of Radical Roots, a Chinese herb company on a mission to make superior hemp and herb products and Remy’s Revenge resource website.