Chanchal Cabrera

[Stefanie Mordaunt]

Herbalmedicine is part of our daily lives. Coffee, tea, soup, salads... we are already consuming plants, and many are medicinal. Walking in nature and gardening, these are also aspects of plant medicine.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. There is that herb shop in the East Village that used to be there back in the 80s, and I would just go in and try to learn about it as much as I could. And yeah, that's completely what brought me to naturopathic medicine.

Yep, I read The Way of Herbs, cover to cover probably, and started putting together things. I was in college, undergraduate and a little kitchen chemistry going on, which I really enjoy anyways, to this day. But we have a great guest today on our program, Chanchal Cabrera, who is a renowned master herbalist and specializes in cancer care.

Yeah, this was a really good talk. This was they all are really good talks, but I downloaded the book on Audible so I could listen to it quickly before we talked to her and, yeah, it was just so inspiring. It really reminded me of what brought me to naturopathic medicine.

Exactly, exactly, because we get kind of bogged down in straddling between conventional and natural all the time and of course you know keeping all of that in our heads as integrative practitioners, it feels a little bit bogged down with the conventional side because of course there's more modern day evidence for that and for supplements for that matter, and there's less strong evidence for whole plant medicine than there is for the supplements or for drugs is certainly so yeah, it was nice to get back to our roots.

It's speaking of roots. She does mention this is a weird segue speaking of roots, she mentions a couple of herbalists who, if you're not familiar with the herbal world, people might not know who these people are. So one of them is Dr Eric Yarnel, who is a naturopathic doctor. He's up in Seattle area, right, and he teaches at conferences.

He teaches urology. Yes, that's right. That's right, yeah. And the other name she mentioned that would be well-known in the herbalist community but probably not well-known in general, is Donnie Yance, who is an herbalist down in Southern Oregon and also specializes in oncology, and so she did some of her earliest training there, and so she mentioned that in the episode. So those are the two names that probably need a little context like this. Other than that, we just have an inspiring conversation about plant medicine and how that can be useful during and after treatment for cancer.

Yeah, and it's a little different than how I practice, because I have been sort of led away from herbal medicine and so it was just kind of nice to have this conversation and get her perspective on things. So with that, here's our conversation. Hi Tina, , we have a guest today. Yes, a very special guest.

Do you want to tell us about her? Yeah, so today we are talking with renowned herbalist Chanchal Cabrera. For some background, chanchal is a medical herbalist and has been in clinical practice for 35 years, with a specialty in holistic oncology. She's the author of Fibromyalgia A Journey Towards Healing, and her latest book is called Holistic Cancer Care and Herbal Approach to Reventing Cancer Helping Patients Thrive During Treatment and Minimizing the Risk of Recurrence. That was published just earlier this year in 2023, so it's very much updated. She held the faculty chair in botanical medicine at the Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine in New Westminster from 2004 to 2016. And she publishes widely in professional journals and lectures internationally on medical herbalism, nutrition and health. She's also certified in forest bathing, certified master gardener, certified horticultural therapist. She lives on Vancouver Island in BC where she and her husband manage Innisfree Farm and Botanical Garden, a seven-acre internationally-registered botanical garden specializing in food and medicinal plants, and where they host apprentice ships in sustainable food production and herbal medicine. The farm also hosts gardens without borders, a federally-registered not-for-profit society established to run the botanic garden and provide horticulture therapy. Wow, that's a life dedicated to plants if I've ever seen one. Thank you so much, t'chang-shall, for joining us. I'm really excited to talk about plants and you know, from the novice to the expert, I feel like you have something for everybody and I so appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

Thank you so much for that introduction, Tina, and thank you for the opportunity to come on to your show. You know, I truly believe that herbal medicine is the most democratic medicine available. It is of the people, for the people, by the people. Everybody does herbal medicine. If you made a cup of coffee this morning, you have already done some herbal medicine, because it has all those bitters, it has all those antioxidants. If you put black pepper on your dinner, you're taking herbal medicine. People are doing it without even realizing what they're doing. Just, you know, as you know, there is no separation between food and medicine. That is a spurious division that really doesn't hold up in any kind of clinical practice. We use many foods as medicines. Even in the clinic we'll use extracts of rosemary or celery or sage, which could just as well come from the kitchen, but we use the minimal clinical context. So yeah, I think herbal medicine is something that everybody can do and should do, and indeed actually does already.

What I really like about your book is that when you talk about plants, it's not only as food and herbal medicine, but also being in plants and being in nature. So I just I love how it's so immersive. You know just every part of the plant. I love that.

Yeah, I think it's really important that we bring the beauty and the magic back into medicine. It doesn't have to be this scary thing that we only do when times are tough, like there's actually healing from just going for a walk in the woods, there's healing from having flowers in your home and you know, as a horticulture therapist, that's part of the work that I do is to actually get people, I guess, like in touch with nature as an entity, not just needing medicine but healing on a much deeper I mean maybe I could even say on a soul level, connecting people back to plants, connecting people to nature. Really, for me is the work and the clinical aspect actually comes after that. So I'll often take my patients even my cancer patients, if they're in the person, will go and walk in the medicine gardens and I'll introduce them to some of the plants that are going to be in their formulas. They're not going to grow those themselves, they're not going to make that medicine, but at least they have a sense that it isn't just a horrible tasting potion in a bottle or a capsule. That's sort of abstract and anonymous. It's actually plants doing the work. And my not so very hidden agenda is actually, as a fairly active environmentalist. I'm very involved with environmental groups here in my community, sitting on boards and so on, and so I really believe if people don't notice nature, then they won't care to protect it either. So part of my work as a herbalist is to help people notice nature so that they care to do something about it.

Well, I think, in the tone of your book, because it is your tone and your belief, it is interwoven nicely. I'll admit it's very long it's 450 pages of actual content for the lay public and then a second section for practitioners, which I really appreciate it, of course. But I found myself thinking about even the land that I'm sitting on now. I'm in high desert. There's not a ton of plants, our soil has zero nitrogen, naturally. But even then there's an alder tree and I'm reading in one section I skim, and it says alder bark and I'm like huh, I never even think of that alder tree as medicine, to be perfectly honest, because I've never, even as a naturopath and part-time herbalist, I don't think of using the alder tree. And so it had me thinking I need to do a little stock assessment of what I'm walking on to my own property and just walk around and look at the smallest flowers to the biggest trees and look them up and see what we have. So it was really nice. I felt inspired.

Yeah, I think there's almost. Every plant has some medicinal constituents, whether they're readily accessible and easy to use or not. But again, that alder tree is giving you shade and it's actually releasing those leaves in the fall and that's the opportunity to use those to build some soil with. But alder is a tree that grows where there is very little nitrogen because it has the bacteria on its roots, like a pea plant that puts nitrogen in the soil. So where that alder is growing, you're actually building better, healthier soil. And alder is short-lived, so when it falls, when it dies and you cut it, you're going to have enriched soil below. So there is a purpose to every plant.

So, even if you're not ill looking at herbal medicine as optimal medicine, yeah, I think that's really important because we sadly, in our modern culture, we don't have health care. We have sickness care. We have this wonderful thing in cancer practice called watchful waiting. It's like you're not sick enough yet to do anything drastic, so just hang around a bit, you'll get sicker and then we'll do something. I find this absolutely unconscionable. It's like what is wrong with us that we can't practice proactive, preventative wellness care and therefore not need as much sickness care. And you know, in Canada we do have socialized health care, everybody gets health care, but very few people get great care because it's spread so thin and there isn't enough to go around. So, again, waiting until disaster strikes. We spend less than 1% of our health care budget on prevention in this country. And yeah, you know the National Cancer Institute very mainstream, very conservative. They say that 65% of all cancers are preventable through diet and lifestyle. So why do we only spend 1% of our health care budget on prevention? Well, you know we could go down a few rabbit holes about, about, you know, the vested interests in keeping us sick and selling us drugs. But I prefer not to have that sort of negative approach to it. I prefer to come back around and say that's a great opportunity for us as health care providers and wellness counselors and a great opportunity for the patients, the individuals, to actually do something about that, to get involved and take some level of responsibility for their own well-being. So I'm sure you're aware the root of the word doctor is the same root as the word teacher, so a doctor is a teacher Traditionally. Originally you would talk how to help be healthier, how to live a healthier life, and really that's where it is most effective. And in my book I definitely emphasised this thing that I find so difficult when people talk about alternative medicine, as if we have to choose between, you know, taking herbs or other naturopathic practices versus mainstream conventional interventionist medicine, and I find that very unfortunate for the patient because it puts them in an untenable position of making choices that they shouldn't have to make. So I call my work collaborative medicine, because that's really the attitude I bring to it. I want whatever it is that makes you feel better, that's a good thing. Well, maybe not anything, but you know, within reason, you know, if drinking a bottle of whiskey a day makes you feel better, it's probably not going to get my vote of approval. But I also feel like. If having a glass of red wine on a weekend is part of your unwinding and de-stressing, it's probably not the worst thing that you're going to do to yourself. So it's all about context, it's all about moderation, I suppose, and in my book. You know, I was contracted to write a book for the general public and I looked around at what other books were available in that arena, and there's some excellent books available for the general public on how to navigate cancer and how to manage some of the side effects, how to get through it and how to prevent it. There's some very, very good books written by some of our colleagues, in fact. But what I found was missing was the books for the practitioners, and there are a handful, your own included, but I felt like there wasn't really anything that focused specifically on the plant medicine. So there's some good resources for practitioners, but not a lot that was grounded in the earth, and so that's where I decided to go with mine. So my publisher blessed them. They were very gracious about it because I told them I couldn't really write the book they wanted. It wasn't, I guess, challenging enough for me because I knew there were some other good materials available. I wanted to go to the next level and they agreed that we could do a kind of two-part book. We even looked at doing two books at one point but decided to hold it all in the one book. So it is designed for the sort of patient and family and care support team at the beginning of the book and more of the clinician or prescribing practitioners towards the end. But I have to say that a lot of my patients are reading it all the way through and coming back to me and saying now I understand why you're giving me these big, complicated protocols with all these different moving parts and asking me to do a poultice and a tincture and a tea and go for a walk in the woods. And I'm like, yep, there is actually science behind every one of those decisions. It's not a random grab bag of let's try this and let's try that. There's real science behind it. And I'm sure you're familiar with the delicate darts of trying to take analytical isolated constituent research and translate that into whole herb or holistic medicine. And it's very tricky darts because the research is compelling about isolated constituents, animal models and test tubes, torturing rats. And we do this research on animals because they're somehow different enough from us that we can sort of morally justify it. I'm struggling to say that, but that's what the science suggests that they're different enough that they don't have the same level of consciousness that we can do that research on them. And yet we're then expected to extrapolate that to humans as if it's similar enough that we can apply it to the human body, and this is a big disconnect. So what I did with that was I looked at all the analytical research, of which there is reams and reams about berberine and curcumin and thymoquine and all the isolates, and then I went back into traditional herbal medicine literature and looked for whether those plants have application and if I could find a connection between the isolated research and whole herb medicine from history, then I could feel that there was a holistic strategy that I could really put into the book and put into my clinical practice. So I do use a few isolates in clinic for various reasons, like, for example, green tea. I do use the EGCG because the research is really good and it's really hard to get that much of that one constituent by drinking cups of green tea float away. But I will also give people green tea to drink, and particularly matcha, because you can get a lot of green tea that way, alongside of their isolates. So I'm still trying to do holistic approach, even when I'm using that isolated research and isolated constituent. Sometimes it's a delicate dance.

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