This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.
Ruth Soukup: It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of pharmaceuticals, or the way big pharma, and big food for that matter, have not only corrupted the health industry, but directly caused the massive health and obesity crisis in this country. And while we talk a lot here on this podcast about how you can start healing your body by eating the right things, One thing we don’t really talk about is what natural alternatives exist for replacing the drugs that are still taking up space in your medicine cabinet.
That’s why I’m so excited about today’s episode. If nothing else, it’s definitely going to give you some serious food for thought. So let’s dig in.
Welcome to the Feel Better Live Free podcast brought to you by Thinlicious. I’m your host, Ruth Soukup, and here we’ll talk about everything from the science of weight loss to practical tips for making your health a priority in the midst of a busy life. It’s a little bit nerdy, a little bit funny, and a little bit revolutionary.
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Hey there, and welcome back to the Feel Better Live Free podcast. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup and I’m the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of seven books. And today we are going to be chatting with my friend, Heidi Villegas, who is a passionate herbalist with over 20 years of experience, as well as an aromatherapist and a homesteader.
And she has not only been able to heal her own body naturally and eliminate all of the medications from her life, she now teaches people around the world how to use herbs as medicine. And she’s pretty amazing. And today she’s going to be walking us through what that actually looks like. And I gotta tell you, this is honestly one of the, my favorite conversations that I have ever had on this podcast so far.
It’s pretty fun. We get a little heated sometimes it’s, but it’s pretty good. So without further ado, I am excited to be able to introduce you to today’s interview guest, Heidi Villegas. Heidi, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you.
Heidi Villegas: Thanks Ruth. I’m thrilled to be here.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Ruth Soukup: You’re welcome. And you know, people don’t, might not know this, but you and I have known each other for a very long time. You’ve been in my business programs for a long time and been in my mastermind and all this stuff. So we had lots of opportunities to talk about the business side of what you do, but I haven’t actually had that much time to talk to you about like the actual nitty gritty of what you do, which is actually very cool.
So why don’t we just start like, give us a quick overview of who you are, what you do, and then we’ll dive in.
Heidi Villegas: Okay so I’m Heidi Villegas and I’m the founder of Healing Harvest Homestead and also the School of Botanical Arts and Sciences. I’m an herbalist, and I’ve been an herbalist now for about 20 years, and then I got into aromatherapy probably about, oh, five or six years ago, and got educated in that.
But I came into this with some really serious health issues, and I was doing everything right, I thought. And I discovered medicinal herbs kind of by accident. And there’s a whole story behind that, but I won’t go into it. But anyway, that’s what spurred my interest in medicinal plants. And I was able to heal my body from, oh my goodness, so many different health issues.
And many of them were related. They were like side effects of the different health issues I was having and the medicines I was on. And so once I got off everything, It’s, I’m 60 years old and I feel better now than when I was 40. Even though I was like fitter back then, you know, so I now teach people how to use these medicinal herbs and God gave us the herbs.
He gave us the plants for our food and medicine. And we as a collective society have forgotten how to use them. So I just helped bring that back.
Ruth Soukup: I love that. I love that. Well, and you know, as you probably know, I think, but I’m not a big fan of big pharma. So I love anything that’s alternative. And yet I don’t know, like herbalist, that sounds like such a like fancy term.
So tell me, like, tell me, explain to me, what is an herbalist?
Heidi Villegas: So, and this is so funny because a lot of people will study herbs and start using natural remedies. and making their own natural remedies. And they hesitate to call themselves an herbalist because it does seem kind of like high end, fancy, whatever.
The reality is anybody who works with medicinal herbs is an herbalist. I mean, if you’re a gardener and you grow mint in your yard and you use that for herbal teas, well, you know, to an extent you’re an herbalist. Yeah. And many people, it’s fun. I like it. So, and many people once they start learning more deeply about the medicinal plants, they go on to help other people.
That’s exciting.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah. So what is considered a medicinal plant? Like what are the different, or like that ones that people would have heard of?
Heidi Villegas: Okay there are thousands of them, first of all, and yeah, many of them are actually the foods that you have in your kitchen right now. For example cinnamon is an incredible medicinal herb in a number of different ways, many uses for it.
Lavender, garlic peppermint, rosemary, oregano your Italian spice seasoning. This is so funny. A friend of mine was telling me that her son who’s in college. Started having an illness and she said, just go to the doctor. Now she’s one of my students and she was worried about him. He says, no, because I’m not going to take an antibiotic and I’m not going to take a steroid.
I love this kid. Exactly. Well, I, she’s been my student for a really long time. So she like knows, she goes, look, go to the grocery store. Get your, get the Italian spice seasoning and do an herbal steam. And that’s going to, you know, help release everything and help you heal up. He did it. He felt better like literally within a day.
So, wow. Yeah. Many people just don’t realize how these herbs are so at our fingertips and Big Pharma does not want us to know about them.
Ruth Soukup: No, they do not.
Heidi Villegas: No, if you look at the history of medicine, like, you know, the AMA, the American Medical Association in society, it’s really quite sickening. And it started long ago, really back in the 1800s.
And if you want to go back even farther and get into, I hate the word, the patriarchy and all of that, you could take this all the way back into the 1500s with the witch trials and things like that. They were wow. Yeah. There’s a, all the way back to that. Yeah. It’s a fascinating history.
But in modern society you know, the American Medical Association, the FDA, the health insurance industry, and of course big pharma, basically just crushed herbalism and herbalist. Herbalism used to be legal in our country to practices of medical modality, and it no longer is. They’ve taken it away from the people.
So yeah, so herbalists now, like when I work with clients, I’m not practicing medicine or any form of alternative medical health. What I say is I’m not a doctor. And. I don’t diagnose. I don’t prescribe. I don’t cure. I don’t treat, but we support the body’s natural healing processes. So we kind of have skirted around the language.
Yeah, but
Ruth Soukup: yeah, oils are kind of like that a little bit too, which I have been using, you know, essential oils for. 10 years, 12 years, something like that. And I have, but I have, I find it frustrating that you can’t get like good answers, right? Like if you Google it, everything is so throttled to find out like what essential oil will do which thing because of everything that they’re allowed or not allowed to say.
And even like what I ended up doing was buying old books, like books from, I don’t know, the 1980s and 1990s. 90s. I would find them on eBay or Amazon or whatever. And they were expensive because there’s not very many of them because other people have done the same thing, but from before they started really throttling what you’re allowed to say about these different essential oils.
So that I, just so that I could know how to use them and what to use for different things. So how do you. How do you get around that? Like, and then that’s the part that is so like, I think a little bit overwhelming for me. And maybe if somebody is listening, going, yes, I want to use herbs, but if I don’t know what to do, then how is that going to help me?
So how do you get around that to actually like learn what things do, what things and what are used for what things, does that make sense?
Heidi Villegas: It does. So first of all, let me talk essential oils for just a moment because I do both. And yeah, funny because not many herbalists who practice herbalism actually practice aromatherapy too and vice versa.
Most aromatherapists don’t practice herbalism, but I actually have a few stills copper stills and I distill my own essential oils oftentimes. Here’s, yeah. So here’s, and I started doing that and I just, had a light bulb moment. I liked one day, but essential oils are simply another herbal extract.
That’s all they are. When we put herbs in a alcohol, we extract like, like vanilla extract. You’re actually making a tincture. Same thing. Essential oils are just a steam distillation of the plant. So really I look at essential oils as herbalism and that’s that’s my view on it.
Ruth Soukup: No, it’s kind of, it’s just a different version of the same thing, the same plants, the same herbs, that all the difference.
Heidi Villegas: Yeah, it’s a very concentrated form of the plant matter. So you have to be super careful with them, but it’s herbalism still. And as far as, you know, what your question was about getting started I’m not going to lie. It’s hard and it’s because the information has been throttled. And I’m just going to say this with the rise of AI.
AI is wonderful in a lot of ways, but in terms of getting information about things that are censored, I wouldn’t go there. I’ve actually Googled herbal questions so many times and I’ve given, been given wrong answers, wrong by AI. So don’t do that. I wouldn’t trust anything on Google to be honest.
It’s the same,
Ruth Soukup: sorry to interrupt you, but it’s the same thing with all the stuff that I talk about here on this podcast, right? Because. The traditional health right of, Oh, you just need to count your calories and eat less and exercise more and go like the standard approved line, which is all BS, which has made all of us fat and unhealthy and sick for the last 40 years is what you find.
And that’s why it’s so, that’s why we’re health rebels here, Heidi, because it’s counter culture and it makes me crazy because I think. This is actually what works. And we are and the evidence in our society is that 80 percent of people are overweight. Everybody’s sick. Everybody’s on medication. Like what we’re doing is not working.
Does nobody see that? Does nobody see that here? Like, clearly, like, I don’t even have to like, be a conspiracy theorist to be able to look at society and know That this what we’re doing is not working. Let’s find a different way.
Heidi Villegas: Hallelujah. I didn’t know No, I totally agree. And I love hearing you talk about this.
And I think you’re very brave. I’m not brave enough yet to get out there. You’re talking here. Yeah, exactly. But you know, maybe I will with some of the shifts that have been going on.
Ruth Soukup: I would ask you about that. Like, what do you think now about like Maha, right? Like, and this is like, let’s put all politics aside.
I don’t really talk about politics. I am pretty excited about make America healthy again. I must say I am because it is everything that we talk about on this podcast all the time. And now it’s coming out in like, I think it’s opening up the conversation at least, but that’s going to change the regulations like for what you do.
And no,
Heidi Villegas: I honestly, I really don’t. I do think that in terms of some foods, some cosmetics, some home products, which release endocrine disruptors and everything else into our bodies through inhalation and skin use. I do think some of that might shift and change, especially because over in Europe, they have such their rules and their laws are much, much healthier for the people.
And they’re much more stringent about things like cosmetics use and what toxins are allowed and not allowed here in America. It’s a free for all and it’s all about the money and it’s all about, you know, who’s getting rich and who’s not and the people are suffering. The people are absolutely suffering.
I get really angry when I think about situations I had with my children health wise, because again, you know, my kids were born in the eighties, a really long time ago nowadays, but. I, it’s like I didn’t know what to do about colic. If I had known that I could have drunk a cup of chamomile tea 30 minutes before I nursed my baby, he probably would have been a lot less, he would have had less pain and I would have had less pain.
Just little things like this that we just have lost, Ruth. It’s crazy. And now, food. Yeah, they have they’ve made our food toxic. I know,
Ruth Soukup: I know. I talk about that all the time, but I mean, just thinking about like what you’re saying, like my same thing, my daughter, my youngest daughter cried for the first three years of her life.
And now we know she had allergies and all this stuff. And, It was probably similar things, right? There’s so much that I could have done. Had I known who knows what I was eating or not eating. And I look back at pictures of my pantry thinking that I was eating fine. And it was like, I cringe now.
And then just this week, a new, I just read an article of that. Now, all these young people are being diagnosed with colon cancer and they’re One of the reasons is because of all the seed oils. Right? But what happens when you go to the grocery store? If you go to the grocery store and you look at all the oils, what ones say heart healthy on them?
It’s the shit ones, right? It’s ones that are terrible for you and are making you sick. And yet the labels on them make those look like they’re the good choice. And that is disgusting. That is disgusting about our society. It is. It’s, Yeah. And then again, I say like, all you have to do is look at the results of our, of what has happened in our society and what we’re getting.
And if and no, something is wrong, this isn’t working like critical thinking skills would tell you whatever we’re doing is not the answer. So let’s try something else. Okay.
Heidi Villegas: Ruth, you’re so right. And it’s even the same with just normal over the counter drugstore drugs. It’s the same exact thing as with our food.
Did you know that the DM, the dextromethorphan that’s in cough syrup, it’s a semi narcotic? And teenagers have actually learned how to get high with it. It’s not supposed to be used with children under the age of six, and yet I’ve seen labels for the cough syrups for kids, little children two years old, dosage amounts.
It’s nuts. Acetaminophen, which, you know, we all just love for as a pain reliever. It’s actually the number one killer of people who die from liver disease. It’s not alcohol. It’s acetaminophen. We’re taking things and some of us a lot, especially like stuff like Afrin, people get addicted to that stuff.
There, there’s a better way. There’s a natural, better, gentle, and more effective way. to deal with our food, our bodies, our life, our medicines, the things we need for blood pressure. I managed, do you know what? We have not taken any prescription or over the counter drugs in going on 15 years now. And it’s, totally changed our life.
And the thing is that I have my medicines. Yeah. I have what we need.
Ruth Soukup: You guys can’t see what I’m looking at. Cause we’re on video right now, but she’s got little jars behind her, like a 18th century. It’s cute. Like that, all the, like all the little herbs and jars. So when she’s pointing at her pharmacy, I’m describing it.
She’s pointing at her pharmacy behind her. It’s a lot of jars.
Heidi Villegas: My pharmacy is actually a lot bigger than that. This is just for show, but honestly it’s a lot of fun. And my students, what happens is with my students come into my world for a couple of reasons. Number one, I’ve got a lot of young moms who want to learn this, these skills for their kids and their families and teach their kids at a younger age, which I just love that.
That makes me just so happy when I see young people waking up going, like you said what are we not? You know, understanding here. It’s a mess out there. So I get young moms. I get older people coming to me who are like in their forties and fifties and they’re starting to experience health problems.
And they’re like, wait a minute, the drugs aren’t working. This isn’t where, you know, the doctors, I mean, I had medical fail after medical fail. And it’s, I get so mad and it’s like, they want something different. So they come and they want to learn herbalism too. And then I’ve got a lot of homesteaders who like to be self sufficient and then I’ve got a It’s a small crowd of preparedness people.
So preppers. I have a little
Ruth Soukup: tiny bit of prepper in me. I
Heidi Villegas: do too. I do too.
Ruth Soukup: Tiny bit. Not a lot. I’m not like over the top. But a little bit. Just a
Heidi Villegas: little. In
Ruth Soukup: case it all goes south. I want to be okay.
Heidi Villegas: Exactly. I’m there with you.
Ruth Soukup: I love that. So like, I, just going back to what you were saying about the like over the counter stuff, right?
Like we think because it’s sold over the counter, you don’t even need a prescription for it. Oh, it must be safe. It’s fine. It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal. And also I think instinctively, or maybe like, What we believe is that somebody out there in the government or in these FDA and all the regulate regulatory bodies like they have our back, right?
Like they’re looking out for us that surely they wouldn’t allow us to have stuff that was not okay for us. And yet I think that is a lot of the conversation that has come out the last few years, especially post COVID. And now what’s coming out about the truth about COVID and how it was originated and how, and even what the response was and what they would allow you to say and what they wouldn’t allow you to say.
I mean, this report that just came out from Congress, basically saying that. Everything everybody was saying was right. The masks were not effective, that they actually made things worse, that social distancing was not effective. And it actually was terrible for kids and keeping them home from school and all of this stuff, right, that I was afraid to say out loud, but definitely said in my private circles has all been proven to be.
the case. So now it’s almost this thing too, of like, how do we, who do we even know how to, who to trust if our, if the people that we are trusting to look out for us, doctors and agencies and FDA and all of these people that are supposed to have our back are actually allowing us to take things that are making us sicker.
Heidi Villegas: You know, I know exactly what you mean. It’s a lot of indoctrination. You know, people are indoctrinated from the time they’re born. And if their parents have been indoctrinated already, it’s just, it’s a lost cause until somebody wakes up and goes, Okay, I need to learn more about this, that or the other, and what’s going on.
You know, it’s, and how do you solve the problem? Well, you start learning. You know, once you wake up to what is going on in the world, and hopefully more and more people will, especially with Maha, glad you mentioned that then you start learning. And unfortunately, the only way, the best way, and the fastest way is to get into a program, like people get into your Thinlicious.
They want to take charge of their health through their food and food is our first medicine. Then usually people, hopefully people will take it a step farther and go, you know what, maybe these drugs aren’t the best things. What do I do instead? Oh gosh, these plants work. They work, they’re proven and more and more clinical studies are actually being done on them.
The problem there is that with big pharma, waking up to the fact that people are waking up they’re now starting fear tactics. Like, if you take lavender essential oil and you’re a young boy, you’re going to have, you know, boobs. Well, no, that’s a huge myth. And you know, and I’ve listened to enough research and studies and conferences as well as read them.
It’s a complete myth and it’s a lie. We’re being lied to. Over and over in a number of different ways
Ruth Soukup: and over and I think it’s almost that like you, you go down the rabbit hole or you pull the thread or something you know what I mean like you, there’s like a gate. I guess it’s a play on words but it’s like a gateway drug like for me.
It was. Losing weight, right? Like I just wanted to lose weight and I couldn’t understand why it was so hard and why I was trying so hard and doing all the things and doing all the things that everybody always said to do, like count your calories and eat less and exercise more and do more, you get more cardio.
Why it just was not working. I could not understand it. Cause I’m not, I mean, you know, me for a long time, Heidi, I am not an unmotivated person. I am not a, I am not a person who doesn’t try hard. And like, when I go all in, I’m like, I’m all in, right? Like to the point of like, like dial it back. That’s what my husband says, like dial it back.
And you’re getting a little again. But for real, like that’s how It started for me was purely just, I want to fit into my skinny jeans again, right? Like I always joke about that. I wasn’t, I didn’t care about that much about feeling healthy, even though I did feel like crap, I didn’t really necessarily associate it.
I just, you know, with like it was that it was all connected, which it was, but I didn’t see that what I, it was very superficial of, I don’t feel good about my body and I want it, I want to look good again. And so I, and so from that perspective. Also, sorry, this is a little tangent.
Heidi Villegas: That’s okay. I got
Ruth Soukup: to get this out.
It’s like therapy for me. But from that perspective, right, of just wanting to look good, I totally understand why people take Ozempic, right? Like why they’re like, I’m just taking it. Because if I, if that had come out and thank God that it didn’t come out. Like until after I had really gone through my health transformation because I would have been first in line.
I didn’t care about all this stuff. I wasn’t into all the natural. I wasn’t worried about like, it didn’t really matter to me that much. I just wanted to be skinny. And so whatever it took to get me there, if it was doing a, you know, 10 day juice cleanse or whatever crappy diet I could come up with, that’s what I cared about.
Yeah. And then as I started learning, right? Like that was, so that was the gateway drug for me and it was totally superficial. But as I started really digging into it and going, wait a minute, everything that I’ve ever been told about weight loss is a lie. What else have I been lied about? Right? Like what else is what am I being lied about?
And wait, all of this is actually my hormones. And it’s not just the food that I’m eating and the toxins in my food and the crap the crappy stuff that I’m eating. It’s. Actually, all of the stuff around me and we, all of the medications are also contributing to ruin my gut health and keep me sick.
And
Heidi Villegas: you
Ruth Soukup: go, holy crap. And so now I’m on this podcast ranting like a lunatic because I just want it to be skinny. And I like it opened up. A whole new world of realizing that we’ve all been lied to, that big food is lying to us, that big pharma is lying to us, and that if you really truly want to be healthy, like go back to nature, number one.
And number two, stop believing all the lies and just nourish your body with real whole things.
Heidi Villegas: That’s exactly right. In all the ways, in skincare, with your fluids, everything, all of it you know, oh my gosh. I love talking to a like minded person. It’s so
Ruth Soukup: true. I know people are probably listening to this right now going, Ruth’s on a tear today.
I know I’ve had a lot of coffee, guys. Sorry. A lot of coffee today. So let’s go back to the herbs, right? So if you are thinking like, okay, herbs, yeah, I want to be more natural. I don’t want to, I don’t, I would like to get rid of medications, like even the outer over the counter stuff, but this just feels overwhelming.
Like what’s like, what’s the place to start? Like, what are some kind of simple Things that you could do that are differently that would make a big impact.
Heidi Villegas: It depends on you know, what you’re willing to invest time and money, right, but those are always the two investments that people have to look at.
And if you are on a really tight budget. And you don’t have a lot of money. I’m just going to say go to my YouTube channel or my website. I’ve literally got hundreds of videos. I’ve got hundreds of articles and you can actually start looking. I’ve got an index on my website in the get to know us section and people can actually start looking at remedies that have been formulated by me and have been proven to work with different people.
Now I just want to say here, not I’ll, this is, I got to talk about really quick the difference between medicine, allopathic doctor medicine versus herbal medicine. If you’re a good herbalist, you’re not thinking allopathically. You’re not thinking about, okay, what pill with a doctor, it’s going to be okay.
What’s wrong with you? Here’s a pill mask, the symptom just may get the person more comfortable. That’s all that matters. Herbalists. want to heal the body. So what we tend to do is look at each individual person and think about their constitution. Do they run hot? Do they run cold? Do they are they dry?
Are they moisture? We’re all different. We need different things. And so a holistic herbalist will tend to look at all that and then choose different herbs and plants and formulate them for the individual. Now, with that said, if you’re dealing with something that’s like, like an ongoing issue, like sleep, all you have to do really is figure out which herbs work for you sleep wise, dial them in, and then you’ve got your own personalized, you know, sleep tincture.
You know, you can do that. So I’ve got a few recipes on my website. People can just go and make them and try them. They’re all you guys are Ruth herbalism is so easy. It’s people think it’s really hard. It’s not, it takes literally five minutes to make an herbal tincture. You dump the herbs in a jar, you pour the alcohol in, you let it soak for four to six weeks.
You shake it occasionally and you strain it off. There you go. You’ve got a tincture. What is, what do you do with the tincture? Well, so right before we started talking I have a cough and I, I got it from a friend of mine last week and it’s a, it’s going into my chest. I’m like, okay it’s a bronchial cough.
It’s in the lower respiratory system. So I’m going to use, you know, I’m using wild cherry bark and Ella campaign primarily, plus a couple of other things. So I’ve got my special cough tincture and I just, Take about a half a teaspoon through, it’s about three dropper fulls, put it under my tongue and let it soak in for a little bit and then swallow it.
Or if I can’t stand the taste, which I love my tinctures now, but many people have trouble taking them at first. So just dilute them in a little bit of water, just a quarter cup. And then Drink it down and there you go. The thing about herbalism and like things like the tinctures, they’re made to get, they’re actually, they what is it, the alcohol base or the glycerin base soaks into the mucous membranes throughout the whole digestive tract starting in the mouth through the esophagus into the stomach and They work really fast most of the time.
And guess what they do? Not only is this calming my cough, but the compounds in these herbs are actually going to work to help my body heal up. And that’s another thing too. We try to go to the root cause. Like if it’s a chronic issue, like an allergy, what is causing it? And then we can go work on that while also dealing with the comfort level of the acute part of it.
So It’s a kind of a multifaceted thinking process. So for, but for people on a budget, just start making stuff, giving it a try, get into some really good herbal communities, get in. I have a free one on my Facebook group. I’m not on Facebook very much, but I do have some of my team members are in there helping.
So if you have questions you might want to ask in there, but again, I just want to caution everybody. Please don’t trust the stuff you read online. I’ve seen so much dangerous stuff. And I’m going to say, including my own group, because I’m personally not monitoring it. Always double, triple check, you know, the information before you start messing with things.
And I just also want to mention here with safety, if you’re on medications like prescriptions, you really need to make sure that there’s no herb drug interactions because Yeah, okay. So one of the main primary pain killing herbs that a lot of people start using, especially when they’re new, cause it’s, everybody uses it and it’s easy to understand is willow bark, you know, and a lot of people grow willow in their yards.
I have a couple of different willow trees, but. You can tincture that and it makes a fabulous pain reliever. And it’s because get this, that chemical in willow bark that makes it work is the exact same derivative chemical that’s in aspirin. And literally aspirin started off. in the 1800s with the Bayer company, taking this chemical out of willow and isolating it and saying, Oh, why don’t we just give people the chemical?
Well, it made them really sick. And what they ended up doing then was putting a buffer coating over it, hence bufferin, and then people could actually take it. But Willow bark actually goes through two metabolic processes in the body before it turns into that chemical and it’s so much safer.
It’s gentler and you’re getting all of the other compounds from the willow that go to work to help that compound get into the body and do what it needs to do. I mean, It’s crazy. Actually, Joe, my husband, just, I know people can’t see this. This is a half a gallon
Ruth Soukup: of willow bark tincture. Oh, wow.
Heidi Villegas: Yeah.
Ruth Soukup: And you just, again, you just like put that under your tongue, kind of the same thing, the way that you were.
Heidi Villegas: Yeah. You
Ruth Soukup: just
Heidi Villegas: put it into a little tincture bottle and.
Ruth Soukup: I want to go back to something you said, because it was, it really stuck with me and kind of gave me a light bulb moment. Is that, because we actually talk about this. a lot on this podcast in regards to food, right? That food is medicine in that when you start to eat the right things and cut out all the toxic stuff that you’re eating, you’re healing your whole body, right?
And so that is going to like, whereas. you know, there’s the quick fixes, the medications and the things are designed to mask the symptoms and make you dependent on them so that you have to keep taking them to keep experiencing the results. Whereas if you can actually heal your body from the inside out and eat the right foods and cut out the toxins and reduce inflammation, you’re Insulin resistance and heal your gut and do all these things.
Then your body works the way that it’s supposed to, when you feel good. So all of the symptoms go away. It becomes this very holistic thing, but I don’t think I’ve really necessarily thought about that in terms of medication, right? Even though I talk about it sort of, I like when, because I’m still thinking like, oh, well, what would you do?
What would you do if you had a sore foot then? Right? Like, what do you like, what herb do you use for that? And you’re saying. It’s actually a much more holistic thing. You have to look at the body and look at what your body’s working on and work on healing your whole body. And then all of the symptoms go away.
Heidi Villegas: I’d love to give you an example of that. We have a lot of medical professionals in my family. My daughter, as a matter of fact, is finishing her medical degree this year and going into her residency, which is so weird because her friends look at her, like, well, you’ve got it. Your mom’s an herbalist.
Yeah. They’re taught not to use herbs. They’re told herbs are bad. Tell your patients don’t use herbs.
Ruth Soukup: Did you know 70 percent of medical schools are funded by big pharma?
Heidi Villegas: Oh yeah, absolutely. They don’t want herbs anywhere around. And my daughter did a lot of my research for me a few years ago, before she went off into medical school, she spent like an interim period of like six, seven months at my, with us.
And I said, look, if you’re going to be here, you can like start doing some of my research. And I. were literally open. She used to think I was a kook, but she saw the research. She saw that the proof she was writing my a lot of my books that I’ve written were partially written by her and researched by her.
So, yeah it’s really eye opening for medical professionals when they get to this point and I was going to, oh yeah, I wanted to talk about my daughter in law. So she’s always been against herbs. In fact, she got really mad at me one time. She’s like, Just take a pill. She’s like, it just, it’ll just go away.
Take a pill. I’m like, I’m not taking a pill. Sorry. So we were in the car driving one time. She lives down in Florida and and we, so we had a little ways to go and she goes, so tell me about, you know, your school. And I told her about the school and I told her about my course, ditch the drugstore. And she goes, well, what is it?
What do you learn in ditch the drugstore? Now she had children at this point. I’ve got, they have two little, two of my grandkids are theirs and she’s very interested in natural remedies right now, which is nice. She was asking about the course and. I told her, I said, well, basically in a nutshell, what I do is I teach people to create their own customized home apothecary for their family.
It’s customized. So it’s not generic. And basically you can replace everything that’s in a drug store with what I teach. I mean, seriously, everything. And she goes, right, she says, okay, she goes, so how do you replace Tylenol? And I told her, I said, well, I said, you it’s all about the way you think about it.
So an herbalist, as opposed to a doctor, if somebody comes in with a pain, they’re just going to say, take this much Tylenol. And sometimes they’ll put oxycodone with it too, you know, to power it up a little bit. I said, but an herbalist is going to say, okay, well, what kind of pain is it? Where’s it at?
What’s going on? What’s causing it? So let’s take an example. Let’s just say somebody has oh, a headache. All right, you know, headaches are very common. An herbalist is going to, or as, or if you’re working with your own body, you’re going to go what’s causing the headache? Are my shoulders tense? Is this a tension type headache?
Am I stressed out? Okay, so that’s going to inform which herbs you might use. If you have a migraine headache, That’s going to inform some different herbs that you might use if you’ve got a sinus headache. Well, then you deal with the sinuses and you can also deal with the headache at the same time. And so all of those three different kinds of headaches, you can use different herbs and be very effective with them.
And if you’re at a loss and you don’t know what to do, take your willow bark.
Ruth Soukup: If all else fails, just go to willow. It’s fascinating. Like, I really think that. I mean, clearly it’s more than you could talk about it in one podcast episode, but you’ve put it all together in your course. And so, I mean, you basically did just tell us about what you do in the drug store, but how does somebody get to be part of that?
Heidi Villegas: Well, it’s a hybrid course. I like working with my students I like to interact with them as much as possible. Usually I’ll do what I call an open round two or three times a year where we get on live chats every week so I can really guide them in creating their home apothecary. And I teach from the ground up, like this is beginning, this is like beginning family herbalism and we go into the essential oils.
So they’re also learning basic aromatherapy as well. And then I help people plan and organize their apothecary that having the course be a hybrid means that somebody can join anytime and get started on the materials. It’s very clearly laid out. Our student group is absolutely amazing and filled with so many very supportive and experienced herbalists and aromatherapists at this point.
So there’s always you know, a way to get answers to your questions. And if that fails, you can just reach out and chat me. You know, I love talking with people, but the The bottom line is the goal, I feel like it took me forever to learn this. It took me a really long time because I started learning before the internet was around.
I think that’s a blessing now. Yeah, I had to dig and dig for the information. And my first course was a snail mail course. It was correspondence through the mail. I know it was that long ago. And so I just ended up, you know, feeling like with, and I’m a teacher. I taught kids for close to, well, 30 some years, so 40 dec four decades if you count my preschool teaching years.
And so I know that the faster you can get somebody through a concept successfully with understanding, the better off they’re going to be and the more likely they’re going to use it in their real life. So the goal here is to get people The safety foundation first and then get their plan and organization ready and then dive into the medicine making make some decisions and we guide people like what do you think, you know, they’ll ask and a lot of people will come in with health needs and ditch the drugstore is a course that’s not really for that.
I have another program for people who want higher level health help, but ditch the drugstore is pretty basic. What that said, Many of my students come in with issues like high blood pressure or you know, they’re working on their diabetes, which diet, right? Like you said, you know, type two diabetes can be really cleared up a lot of times just with shifts in diet and exercise.
But a lot of them have been able to get off multiple prescription drugs. Just. That’s amazing.
Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Yeah. So we will link to that in our show notes for those of you who are listening, if you are like, I got to get into this ditch the drugstore so that you can go and get all the stuff we will link to Heidi’s YouTube channel and to all the things she’ll send us all the things we’ll add all of those to the show notes.
I feel like Heidi we could keep talking. forever about this, so you’ll have to come back because I don’t feel like I have another hour’s worth of questions for you. But since it’s winter, how about we just end with like, if somebody comes down with a cold or flu or whatever and wants to feel better.
What do they do?
Heidi Villegas: It depends on the symptoms. It depends on the symptomology. So number one would be work with your immune system. Be sure that you’re handling that. If you, and it depends, there’s four stages of cold and flu that I like to think about. There’s the first stage, where you know you’re going along and things are good and you feel like you’re just getting a little sick boost that immune system take your echinacea that would be the time don’t take echinacea all the time it’s too powerful people don’t realize that there was a period of time where you know echinacea came on the market and everybody’s like i’m just going to take it every day well it doesn’t work like that it actually will mess up your immune system on the daily.
So you take it right when you’re starting to get sick and then elderberry should be taken a little bit at a time ongoing as a tonic. Those two things right there along with getting, you know, enough sunshine for vitamin D you know, taking your zinc, your usual stuff getting enough rest, you know, you guys know the lifestyle thing.
Is the first step. The second step is if you start getting, you know, the first symptoms, get them get on those immediately, because like I said a minute ago, a lot of those remedies, like for sore throat, or for a stuffy runny nose. Those not only will handle the stuffy runny nose and the sore throat, but they’ll actually they’ve got compounds like time, the herb that you can find in the grocery store.
It has an oregano, of course. And rosemary. So I could keep listing them. I had to guard the designs. Yeah. Yeah. You can start taking those. They’ll help the body heal more quickly. And they’ll also take care of some of the symptoms as well. And then the next thing is, you know, as you’re recovering, don’t stop, keep taking your echinacea, you might start feeling better, but you’ve got to keep on going for another, I always say a week or two, just to be sure, because a lot of people will start feeling better, they stop taking everything, and then now they’re sick again, and you get better Well, who are, you know, they’re sick for like six months because they just don’t give their body a chance to rest.
There’s a lot of different, like I said, my website, my YouTube channel hundreds and hundreds of remedy and I cover. Extensively.
Ruth Soukup: Watch out, Heidi. I might be in there this year because, you know, I just announced this, that next, that 2025, I am only going to be working three days a week instead of five.
Heidi Villegas: I’m like, I want to do that.
Ruth Soukup: Focus on my homestead here, which has no animals and Two sad little herb plants that do have time. Oh, and I have basil. So I have three, three sad little herb plants,
Heidi Villegas: but somewhere I got to start somewhere. Yeah.
Ruth Soukup: So I’m ready. I have been working since starting three years ago.
It has been a grind, so it is time to, it is time to. work, spend a little less time in the office and a little more time outside. And I’m excited about that. Well, Heidi, this was amazing. So thank you so much. Again, we will be adding links to everything that Heidi talked about in the show notes, you guys. So definitely check those out.
Check out her Ditch the Drugstore course. If you want to learn more about herbalism, if you want to become an herbalist, if you want to ditch the drugstore and just have herbs in your pharmacy which I definitely do. And I’m very excited about this. So thanks again, Heidi, and hopefully we can talk to
Heidi Villegas: you soon.
Ruth Soukup: All right, guys, that about does it for this episode. Remember that you can find all the links to everything that we talked about on the show notes. And if you know somebody else who might benefit from everything that we talked about today, please be sure to send it their way. Then be sure to subscribe to the podcast to be notified of future episodes.
And I will see you back here for another new episode very soon.