67. Harvesting Light: The Alchemy of Sun & Human - Nadine Artemis
Release Date: 04/28/2020
Medicine Stories
Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed. We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’...
info_outline 109. Loving Ourselves Home: Finding Sanctuary in Herbal Medicine - Kami McBrideMedicine Stories
The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions. Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force. Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. The plants call us home to ourselves. Kami’s Free Workshop (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s Free Webinar (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s revered course ...
info_outline 108. The Mythic Hive & How Bees Heal Us - Ariella DalyMedicine Stories
Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth....
info_outline 107. Death is the Great Healing: Reclaiming Ancestral Relationship w/ the Dead - Perdita FinnMedicine Stories
“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.” To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul. RESOURCES: Perdita’s website (book giveaway & course coupon code) by Bernd...
info_outline 106. Chronic Illness: Telling Honest Stories, Navigating the Underworld, and Tending the Roots - Sarah RameyMedicine Stories
It is estimated that half of all Americans have chronic health issues, and yet these conditions are new to the human species. What has happened? And how does an afflicted individual navigate a medical system that dismisses them and offers little help, embedded within a culture obsessed with self improvement and the hero’s journey of triumph? Sarah and I talk about the multifactorial nature of chronic illness and what has changed between generations, walking the fine line between self-responsibility and acknowledging that we’re all embedded in toxic systems that are out of our control,...
info_outline 105. Synchronicity Reveals Our Ecological Niche - Sophie StrandMedicine Stories
Healing is communal. Settle in softly for this wide-ranging conversation with my most requested guest. Sophie and I talk chronic illness and trauma, diagnosis as blessing and as hex, the theater of medicine, the aquatic nature of memory, and the entanglements of time. RESOURCES: Sophie on Sophie’s newsletter by Sarah Ramey ACE- by Bessel van den Kolk (giant trigger warning; read the book below instead) by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel by Erik Wargo by Julia Cameron by Barbara Ehrenreich (a podcast beloved by both me & Sophie) Read by Ursula K Le Guin by Karen Barad by Joanna...
info_outline 104. Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, & Metabolic Wellness - Sarah KleinerMedicine Stories
The sun rules the rhythms and the well-being of all life on Earth, and humans are no exception to this rule. With the very recent (evolutionarily speaking) advent of indoor living and the even more recent advent of indoor lighting, we have inadvertently shut down the vital communication between sunlight and our cells. This is as upstream as it gets when it comes to health, and when we come back into relationship with the sun all manner of issues (insomnia, obesity, infertility, and so much more) can resolve. Let’s talk about the science behind circadian rhythm and practical ways to heal with...
info_outline 103. Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse - Dr. Suuzi HazenMedicine Stories
Suuzi has been one of my best friends for 15 years, and our lives have taken parallel tracks recently- deeply interested in health & natural living for decades, we have nevertheless both found ourselves in total burnout at the edge of collapse in our early 40s. We share what got us here (and the irony that so much of it is doing things we truly believed were making us healthy), the current state of our metabolic/thyroid/mineral health, and our paths going forward. We hope this inspires others feeling stuck and confused- despite tremendous effort to be healthy- to quiet the outside noise, self...
info_outline 102. The Living Matrix of Fascia & the Resonance of the Heart - Lindsay CourcelleMedicine Stories
We can’t talk about fascia, the connective tissue that touches every single cell in the body, without talking about water, memory, and the quantum information that travels along this network at speeds 1000x faster than biochemical/neuronal signaling. When we bring tactile witnessing to our fascia through presence and touch, mountains move. Get ready to have your mind blown and, if you’re anything like me, to spend the rest of your life diving deeper into these subjects. RESOURCES: Lindsay on Amber on Lindsay’s Lindsay’s (use coupon code MEDICINESTORIES for 66% off) Get the 100+...
info_outline 101. Rooting With the Ancient Mothers: Healing Wounded Lineages by Reclaiming Physiologic Birth & Radical Togetherness - Aimee ArohaMedicine Stories
Our modern disconnection from land and lineage mirrors the culturally normal- but biologically abnormal- separation between mother and baby, parents and children. The consequences of these intertwined attachment wounds are vast. But many of us are dreaming into a different way forward. Let us speak truthfully about what isn’t working, divest from the systems that break our sacred bonds to the Earth and to one another, and heal into the wholeness that is our ancestral inheritance. Join me on my in September. RESOURCES: Aimee’s website Aimee on (podcast bonuses!) Take our fun quiz...
info_outlineIn a brilliant act of human photosynthesis, our cells evolved over millennia to receive and transform information from the source of all life on earth, the sun. Yet our species has moved further and further away from the consistent solar interaction that our ancestors thrived on. As industry seeks to instill fear for profit, and as millions of us slap highly toxic sunscreen onto our (and our childrens!) bodies each summer, we are missing out on a profoundly rich source of health and vitality. Let’s talk about all the ways in which the sun supports wellness, and how we can most wisely interact with our local star.
IN THE INTRO:
- Lessons of the tulip
IN THE INTERVIEW:
- Radical beauty- how an early feminist consciousness got Nadine interested in the medicalization of women’s bodies and the need to reframe beauty as radiant health
- The effect of sunlight on the human body is like charging a battery
- When our Vitamin D receptors are amply supplied, our chance of developing many diseases is dramatically lessened
- The sun directly affects both the topical and internal microbiome, as well as our cell signaling systems
- What we have to do to to make up for the lack of sunlight we get is often more harmful than just getting the sun exposure our bodies evolved to need
- Heliotherapy: our forebears knew how to utilize the sun for healing
- When and how we came to fear the sun
- Science shows that people who get lots of sun exposure, and people who live closest to the equator, have LESS chance of developing melanoma (plus, the form of light that *is* implicated in this insidious form of cancer)
- A meta review of studies showed no correlation between melanoma and sun exposure, meanwhile over 2,500 studies have linked lack of natural, sunlight derived Vitamin D3 to increased cancer risk
- Our DNA is able to heal a sunburn much more easily than it can heal the effects of chemical-laden sunscreen baking into our skin all day (which is not to say that we shouldn’t try to avoid sunburns- we should)
- Sunscreen separates UVA from UVB rays, which bypasses the body’s natural sunburn warning system, exposes us to the dangerous form of solar radiation, and filters out Vitamin D
- Our bodies can store up Vitamin D to keep us supplied (and less likely to catch viral infections) throughout the winter
- How to acclimate our sun exposure slowly in the springtime so that our bodies are ready for unabashed sun worship come summer
- Laying out in the sun literally creates muscle tone (all while laying still!)
- What we offer to the sun, in terms of what we put into and on our bodies, matters when it comes to getting the most nourishment- and the least harm- from our time in it
- What to eat to maximize our nutrient intake from the sun and create an internal SPF effect
- Peptides: new science around how to get a base tan before sun exposure
- How zinc works as a sunblock
- Food is just sunlight slowed down into matter
- Shadow food: pesticides affect plant’s abilities to photosynthesize appropriately (eat organic), pastured animals eat sunlight that we then ingest (eat pastured animals), eating plants and animals that grow in the same light environment we live in is helpful (eat local)
- Making sure Vitamin D gets in to our bones
- What we can tell by comparing ancient Egyptian skulls to those of their contemporaries
- The best cure for many skin conditions is sunlight
- We can get up to 2/3rds of the energy that fuels our mitochondria from sunlight (!)
- Vision and the sun: eye health, myopia, and why to limit your time with sunglasses on
- Nadine and I both have our phones on night shift (red light) 24/7
- The connection between the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome: the mouth is a portal into the rest of our body (more on this in the next podcast episode)
- The importance of Vitamin D in preventing viral infections
LINKS (if listening on an app that doesn’t support links, find these at https://mythicmedicine.love/podcast):
- Nadine’s website Living Libations
- Nadine’s book Renegade Beauty
- Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
- Wise Traditions episode 177 Eating Light
- Organic_Olivia on Instagram (peep her Highlights)
- My website MythicMedicine.love
- Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz
- Medicine Stories Facebook group
- Mythic Medicine on Instagram
- Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)