Kim (00:02.013)
Welcome Fiona, Dr. Fiona. Thank you so much for joining me. I think we connected initially through Instagram and you had reached out. It was a post, I believe it was a constipation or poop post hemorrhoids or something and you had recommended, you reached out introducing me to your products and I invited you to come on the podcast because I thought the work you were doing was so amazing and unique and the products you had were.
were fabulous. So first of all, thank you for sending those along to me and also for joining me today. I would love to start out with having you tell the listeners about your background. You've come into Chinese medicine, you support people in a lot of women's health conditions, sexual health, and I'd to learn a little bit more about what brought you to Chinese medicine and also then to creating this line of products.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (00:56.728)
Yes, well thanks for having me on Kim. I'm really excited to have a chat with you. Also, I really love your work and I found it because it was a colleague that tagged me and my products on one of your posts. And so that's when I responded and thought, yes, absolutely, we have compatible work here going on. And I bought one of your courses to check out what you're doing.
learn more I think I bought the recto seal course and I just want to start off by saying because some of my Chinese medicine industry audience will listen to this as well that the course was really excellent and not just the training that you were doing but that you went through and did a literature review of all the best treatments for the condition and you know cases where people had surgery or didn't need surgery because they did certain types of other treatments so it was just really it was real it's a real
pleasure to be here and connect with you and I'm glad that you love the products that I sent you. Yeah so my background how I got into Chinese medicine now it was about 23 years ago I was about 25 when I started and
Kim (01:56.989)
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (02:09.948)
I grew up with allergies and being a highly sensitive person and I had my family's very science-based and both my parents have some kind of allergies but I tend I got like I was the most sensitive person in the family and I had always been taught to use steroid creams and an inhaler and you know I had eczema and asthma and skin reactions and energetic like fatigue from eating the wrong things or whatever and
I didn't really know that it was possible to heal something like that because I'd always been told, well you just use the steroid cream and you've inherited allergies and that's that. And then in my early 20s, had done a degree in performing arts in dance music and so I was training athletically to be a professional dancer.
and kind of reached a certain energetic limit where I had certain amounts of fatigue or inflammation that were impacting my capacity to grow as a, not so much to grow as a dancer, but to reach certain athletic standard, professional standard. And it was a very competitive, you you have to audition to get into the degree and all of that. So I was in the degree, but
I then met a First Nations shaman and started going to him for healings and he basically was the first person to teach me that I could heal.
and I could heal using natural medicine and I could learn to optimize my diet and I could understand the spiritual and emotional and mental health component of my body's reactions and there were things that I could do that would probably minimize the reaction so then some years later that led me to Chinese medicine and
Dr Phiona Gitsham (04:01.048)
wanting to study some kind of natural medicine that was not just herbs on top of a biomedicine model, something that was perhaps more mind, body and spirit integrated and rooted in ancient medical systems or
medicine that had been tried and tested over thousands of years. So I was looking for maybe something ethnobotanical. I didn't know what. And I picked up a book on acupuncture because I saw that to learn acupuncture, you need to do a minimum of a four year health science degree and you need to do a master's and then you can also go on and do a doctorate. I thought, wow, this Chinese medicine stuff has got some serious study behind it. must be really a big body of knowledge. And you
know like a lot of people I had no idea. I didn't know if you learn acupuncture in a month or so to learn that doctors of Chinese medicine have trained for years and done for medical degrees was really exciting for me and so I started reading a book it's a great book for anyone that's interested in learning what Chinese medicine is all about it's called Between Heaven and Earth.
and that book I got a few chapters in and I was like wow this is what I've been looking for they're doing body mind spirit they're talking about the emotions that are stored in each organ they're using acupuncture they're using herbs they're using nutrition they're using exercise they're also using bodywork techniques like massage
you know in terms of exercise it's like qigong and tai chi and medical qigong and so it really was a whole entire lifestyle medical system with herbal medicine with acupuncture with physical treatments and there's not a single human experience that chinese medicine doesn't have a way of treating because it doesn't treat
Dr Phiona Gitsham (05:59.305)
disease or an imbalance, treats a human being and examines where there's imbalance.
and then applies all these different methods to put the body and the being back into balance and then symptoms resolve and or things that have developed to the point of disease resolve. So I also really love the focus on prevention here that if you turn up you know there's an ancient Chinese proverb that if you you know a really excellent doctor treats people before they get sick and prevents it and an average doctor waits until
until they're sick and then tries to help them. And so I started my journey of learning what could Chinese medicine do for me with all my sensitivities and allergies. I would say by the end of my first year of study, I did a five year degree with acupuncture and herbal medicine. And by the end of my first year, just with the help of my lecturing practitioners,
Kim (06:40.597)
Yeah.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (07:06.005)
I no longer had eczema that I'd had for 25 years. And I haven't had it since then.
I no longer had hay fever for three weeks straight every time it became a certain season or if I ate too much of a certain foods and then maybe by the end of my third or fourth year I had figured out a whole number of foods that I didn't realize before were causing part of my problems and so I knew to avoid them but you know in the long run the list of things that I need to avoid now is probably one tenth of the list of things
that I needed to avoid in my 20s and before that because over time of healing and rebalancing the body and reducing the constant state of chronic inflammation, I'm no longer reactive to as many things. I'm still a highly sensitive person but it also makes me really good at what I do and that's how I got into making products as well was
you know, needing to make what didn't exist that would suit me and other really sensitive people like me. And also just, have that kind of creative formulation mind.
Kim (08:20.362)
Mm hmm. So you've talked a little bit, we don't need to go down the whole rabbit hole of Chinese medicine, but you've brought in a couple of key points, which is mind, body, spirit, nutrition, body modalities, the acupuncture, herbal medicine, those are fairly, I would say, consistent throughout Chinese medicine. So in that work, you started out working directly with with patients, like one on one with people, is that correct?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (08:50.358)
Yeah, yeah. I graduated in 2006 and I worked with patients through until a few years ago, maybe five years ago. And moving from Australia to the United States was a part of that shift as well.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (09:10.616)
Gosh, so during that time, I worked with all kinds of patients and conditions and often would be sitting there thinking they need a, you know, they need a product like this and I can't think of one to recommend or there are products for that, but they contain toxic ingredients. So I don't want to recommend them. I want to make something that would work that doesn't contain these other ingredients that are harmful.
Kim (09:37.442)
and then that led you down the path of now becoming a product formulator. what was your very first product?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (09:50.611)
Well, I... gosh. So one of the first things I started trying to make for myself when I was still studying Chinese medicine was moisturising creams and creams that would resolve things like eczema. Because if I had something that would resolve the eczema it would give me pimples or you know so many issues. So I failed.
at my first probably 10 moisturizing creams because they're really hard to make that's jumping in at a hard level. It's not like making a salve or a balm which is all oils you know you're trying to mix oils and water and emulsify and so I did start studying some cosmetic chemistry to learn how to do that and a lot of what I learned in cosmetic chemistry courses is what not to use and what
ingredients are toxic and how they're toxic and what effect they have. But I also did learn some of the basic chemistry that I would need to know as a foundation for making a lot of body care products and being able to be flexible with whether or not I'm going to use waters or oils or mix them and infuse them into them in that way and other actives. So I'll use herbs, I'll use vitamins, I'll bring in probiotics, I'll use amino acids.
Kim (10:57.282)
Got it.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (11:07.146)
So I'm all about like optimizing what we have from the basic herbal formula and how am I going to deliver that to the body in a way where it's bioavailable, it's absorbed and it does a really effective job.
Kim (11:22.396)
And the name I love bioherbology, think that is such a it's such a great name. I love it. So one of the I don't know if it would be considered your flagship or your signature, but one of your really popular products is a lubricant called Dewey Fruit. So tell us a little bit about the evolution of the development. Like what was the need that you saw and
what you don't have to give us obviously the exact formula, but what are some of the ingredients? How is it helping to act as a lubricant?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (11:54.21)
Yeah, so this is a good story. This is a funny story. So I got married in 2016 and my partner and I were given, we were in Colorado where cannabis is legal. And I don't know if, I think we were given it or we were given a voucher or something. Anyway, somehow we ended up with this THC lube.
And by then, by 2016, I was definitely already making some products and I hadn't launched bioherbology as a business, but I had been making things for my clinic and clinics I worked in in Australia and building up my repertoire of the kinds of things, you know, that I could make and wanted to make. And I'd never made a lube or even thought of being the one associated with making the Chinese herbal sex lube.
This THC lube, I was interested to try the THC component of it, but also I'm aware that THC is quite antibacterial and I thought, I wonder how that will affect the vaginal biome. And THC affects me pretty well if I get high.
like through vaporizing it or smoking it. But I know that topically it can affect different, you know some people really don't get much out of it and some do and the other piece of this was that it was THC oil infused into coconut MCT oil.
And I immediately was like, cause here, I have to admit I'm very critical when I read labels, you know, from being so sensitive to so many things for all of my life, I learned to be a master label reader. I go into the stores, I know what all the crazy wacky big long words are that we'd like, what's that? I know what a lot of them are. And you know, this is a couple of decades worth of learning. And so when I'm...
Dr Phiona Gitsham (13:49.811)
and I'm often quite critical of them. I'm like, that's like 80 % good stuff. And then they go and throw me a bad ingredient or this ingredient shouldn't go in that part of the body. So I found myself excited to try the THC Lube but also conflicted because I knew that coconut oil is the wrong pH for the vagina.
and THC is possibly going to disrupt the biome of the vagina but let's see how goes. it wasn't THC didn't very particularly affect me very strongly for as a topical in that sense and I had used cacao butter before I never really used lube before in general I wasn't a lube
bio, I wasn't a lube user but I had used some cacao butter before because it has one of the lowest pHs that could match the vaginal pH. Cacao butter is around 5, the vaginas like 3.8 up to 4.5 or can go up to 5 postmenopausal.
but something like coconut butter and I just want to mention this because I do know a lot of women are using coconut oil or coconut butter. It's from 7 to 9.3 as a pH so it's way too alkaline for a healthy vaginal environment and often does disrupt the biome. So I knew that cacao butter was like lower and closer to the
And also, cacao butter contains anandamide, which is named after the Sanskrit word ananda, which means bliss. And that's why chocolate makes us happy. And there's such a great relationship between chocolate and the menstrual cycle and female hormones for so many nutritional reasons. But anandamide in particular is a neurochemical.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (15:56.212)
that is one of our happy chemicals. also cacao butter will connect to one of our cannabinoid receptors in the brain and with the anandamide and it will stimulate the release of nitric oxide and nitric oxide release is also associated with having better sex. So my brain just compiles all this information really.
it's like I'm not quite sure how I formulated something but five minutes later I had a recipe I wanted to try and most was there so I started with just with used a cacao butter a couple of times and I was like you know what that's a that's a good lube because it's doing just a little bit more than lubricating it's it's kind of I don't know is it enhancing pleasure I'm not really quite sure but it's
you know, it was good. So then I thought I was having one of my moments of being critical. I turned being critical into my superpower here. was like, if I'm so full of all these labels I read, that's my purpose is to do something about it. And I love being a kitchen, which I used to be a chef and I'm a herbalist and I love putting things together. And I literally love being alone in the lab with plants. So,
for me it became very obvious that that was what I'm here to do. And after, you know, I had been practicing for over 10 years at that point and before I became an acupuncturist I was already a practitioner, I was doing reiki and body work and so I kind of got to a point where I had a bit of clinical burnout and I thought what would I do, you know, if I'm just doing what I enjoy to do during the day.
You know that question like if I'm a billionaire and I don't have to earn money what would I do? It's like well I think I would always be making stuff. I would always be formulating stuff. I would always be a little chemistry kitchen witch herbalist. And so I thought you know this cacao butter thing being better than THC lube I can go even better than that. I'm going to infuse Chinese herbs into the cacao butter.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (18:09.376)
and then I'm going to pH test and I'm going to get it to the point where it's the right pH for the vagina and I'm going to put in probiotics for the vaginal biome and I also put in really high quality vitamin E from sunflower seeds because that's so
Powerful in terms of supporting the endocrine hormonal balance as well as tissue repair elasticity and tone Alongside I mean cacao butter already contains vitamin E, but this was just another way to like boost that component and Honestly, that was the recipe from the first batch of dewy fruit and it was it hasn't changed So there's five Chinese herbs one of the herbs five of the herbs are infused
used but one of the herbs is also an extract an additional extract and that's dunggui which is a really well known women's health herb but it's also really importantly used in men's health. In fact of all Chinese herbal formulas if we look at which herb features in the most Chinese herbal formulas and there are thousands of formulas that are considered part of the classical canon of medicine dunggui is the number one used herb in Chinese medicine.
So it's not just for women, it does all kinds of things. We'll talk about it again later for a brace of the base. But I use also an additional extract of dungway. And so when I formulated dewy fruit, I wanted it to support bio imbalance, to support healthy pH, and to therefore also support healthy hormones without. The formula is very balanced. doesn't, it's not a herbal formula that's trying to achieve a particular hormonal correction.
it's just kind of supporting a neutral general hormonal balance. And then if you want to do a specific hormonal correction, then you would take herbs on top of that and do a treatment for that, which you can combine with dewy fruit. So the first tester of it was me. So I tested the first piece.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (20:20.78)
and I knew it would be a loop but I didn't know that it would be an enhanced sensory experience and I was like wow I'm just in love with these herbs and and even after years of being a herbalist I'm constantly learning new amazing things that herbs can do and that's because the dungway you know really connects this channel we call the chong mai channel and the central channels that are used in
what people would know if they do yogic tantra, circulating energy from the perineum up to the crown and back. And that together the formula was really effective in opening the channels, joining the genitals and the womb to the heart, just circulating the energy and enhancing sensation and orgasm and fluid response.
Kim (21:18.851)
Awesome, everything that we want. And what before you before we go a little bit deeper, I guess, but for people that aren't familiar with the term the biome, like the vaginal microbiome or the vaginal biome, some people may have heard the gut biome or the gut microbiome. And I think we there are biomes throughout our bodies. How would you describe the vaginal biome?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (21:20.887)
Yes.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (21:36.388)
Mm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (21:43.716)
Yeah, so we have a gut microbiome which is all the bacteria, healthy bacteria that live in our gut. We also have non-beneficial bacteria sometimes that can cause digestive issues. We have a biome in our brain. We have a biome in our vagina. So there is a healthy group of...
bacteria that naturally live and occur in the vagina that are... So now the research has been done that we have that, you know, there's a list of which bacteria are like populating a healthy vagina. And what goes along with that is the pH. So for example, if you have a Candida overgrowth, which is a yeast bacteria,
that's not beneficial and you'll start to get symptoms and in your pH will be out of whack. Bacterial vaginosis, BV, is another well-known biome disruption of the vagina. So do you want me to mention some of the beneficial bacteria that occur in the biome?
Kim (23:04.579)
Yeah, though I was gonna, yes, please do the ones that I've heard and I've seen a few vaginal probiotic products and lactobacillus is one bacteria but there's also many different forms of lactobacillus and is it lactobacillus crispatus? Is that the one?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (23:10.212)
you
Dr Phiona Gitsham (23:20.804)
Exactly. Yeah, crispardus is in dewy fruit. So I've got a proprietary blend that I've selected that I infuse into dewy fruit. And it's done at the very end.
because the chocolate is tempered at the right degree and it sort of just borders on the degree where you can put probiotics in and not damage them and then they're cooled really instantly. So it's the lactobacillus strain that is the most important for vaginal health. And one of the main reasons for this, I've talked a bit about the pH of the vagina being linked to what's gonna thrive in the biome. And that's because the lactobacillus strain
will go down to the lower pH levels that we need in the vagina and so like down to 4.5 or even below and by doing that some of these strains I'll mention them so you mentioned lactobacillus crispartis it helps the production of that acidic environment to keep it below 4.5 and that prevents overgrowth of certain things like yeast
it stimulates the hydrogen peroxide and these substances will help to inhibit pathogens that would cause vaginitis you know like I mentioned candida or even group B streptococcal species. So there's antioxidant properties as well and some interesting research on chryspartis that I was reading was that it's heritable
inheritable. You know we inherit a lot of our vaginas, all of our biomes during, from our mother.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (25:15.332)
while we're in the womb and going through the birthing process as well. And the breastfeeding process, there is a transfer of biome. so chryspatus is heritable in European and American women. And that may also extend, that was the language in the research, but that may also extend to white Western women, women in white Western countries. And that may contribute to this,
this group of women having a lower prevalence of adverse reproductive disorders in the population. So that's some interesting research I found recently. But there's also Lactobacillus rhamnosus, which again helps keep the pH low and helps to prevent yeast overgrowth. And it also helps to prevent urogenital infections.
So we can have a relationship between getting a UTI and having sex and bacteria entering the urinary tract. So rhamnosus is a really good one for that and other types of dysbiosis. But some ones that I wouldn't make notable is also lactobacillus acidophilus, which we all know from yogurt.
And I think, you know, one of the most tried and true methods of putting probiotics in your vagina is someone just saying put a, put a spoon of yogurt in there, you know, like make sure it's unsweetened, unflavoured, just sour, plain yogurt. And then there's also lactobacillus ruteri, which is also effective against five common strains of candida. So I use about nine in my blend, but they would be some of the more
Kim (27:05.093)
Wow.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (27:06.562)
own ones.
Kim (27:08.946)
So if somebody like my mind's thinking you it's been formulated as a lubricant and there are yes, it's a lubricant to help reduce friction but also there's the essential the the accessory benefits of enhancing sensation as well. But I'm also thinking like if somebody was prone to BV or you know prone to infections is this something they could use as a even like as a daily
vaginal moisturizer that could, because it includes the probiotics in there.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (27:43.702)
Yeah I think so. I don't think you can overdose on using dewy fruit and there's several ways you can apply it. So as a lube it is designed to be applied by basically it melts at skin temperature. Can I show some? I've got a couple pieces here. Let's show them. So they're little fruits. There's a strawberry, there's a little berry and their little cacao butter and they will melt on skin temperature. So I'll put them down and it comes in this sexy jar.
Kim (27:57.467)
Yeah, please.
Kim (28:05.403)
You
Dr Phiona Gitsham (28:14.156)
So we're getting a lot of light reflection here. There's the sexy full-size jar and if you get one of the tester packs it's this cute little box which will have an info card in it which will go through
Kim (28:18.341)
Yeah.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (28:31.574)
some of the basics but when you apply it as a sex lube it melts on skin temperature so you literally rub it on as part of foreplay you rub it onto the vulva and also the penis you know whoever is having sex with whoever or if you're alone you rub it onto your genitals and melt it on like you're putting on a moisturizer but it will stay lubed and for anyone with a vagina it will also stimulate more release
your own natural dew I'm calling it, do your fluids. But one piece you saw the size of it one piece you might use say you rub half of it on the outside you can then kind of slide the rest of the piece inside for the internal moisturising and so
Kim (29:05.371)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (29:24.192)
To be clear if you just put the whole piece inside and you didn't do the stimulated application that's what I call it you're not going to get the instant
lube being sensory turn on experience. I have had reports from women who initially just put it in like a suppository and said they got horny like 12 hours later. So it's the stimulated application that's going to be the sexy vibe and the sexy use. But yeah, if you're using it because let's say you're perimenopausal and you're beginning to experience vaginal dryness and you know, a drop in hormones and
you want to prevent thinning of the tissues and you want to support the pH in the biome or any of those things or all of those things, then I would suggest you can just put the piece inside, but I would always suggest to do some of the stimulated application on the vulva. And the reason for that is that we have a biofeedback effect with our hormones that will respond. And so one of the discussions I think that is supportive
or women is sometimes they're like, well, I'm not really in the mood. And it's kind of like, well, if you don't touch and play around down there, you're also not going to get into the mood. So the stimulated application is part of what will raise the, you know, bring those hormones into responding. So I would recommend even if you're putting it inside, do some stimulated application.
helps your body recognize we're getting a we're getting we're being given something here and then and then yeah the rest and there is an there is some kind of beautiful effect where even if you just put it on the exterior the inside gets lubricated and moisturized as well so you can figure out for yourself how much you want to put of each piece where but i think definitely
Kim (31:28.807)
Yeah. Yeah. And you've mentioned the perimenopausal and menopausal population and that's something that a huge part of my following or my listenership is in that phase of life where we do have changes to the pH in the vagina already, changes to libido, changes to the sensations during intercourse, whether that's with or without a partner, not even intercourse, but just even touch.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (31:32.781)
So.
Kim (31:58.124)
And so I just feel like there are so many benefits as a lubricant, but also as a vulvovaginal self care that can help, especially during this transition and postmenopause.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (32:11.658)
Yeah, I recommend to use it three times a week if we're just looking at, you know, basic support for the transition but no one's saying you can't use it seven times a week.
Kim (32:23.39)
Right. Yeah, okay. And so, so that is obviously a very I would assume a very popular product for yourself. And then I want you to switch focus to brace the base. And then I want to talk I want to touch on actually, no, I want to touch on this first, because I feel like it's a good transition. Part of your part of the kind of the philosophies that you're promoting and products is about herbal douching and
Dr Phiona Gitsham (32:27.8)
you
Kim (32:52.881)
I feel like way back in the 80s, douching was sort of it was you would see commercials about it and everybody was supposed to douche and then it was like, no, never douche. It's bad for your vaginal microbiome. Mind you, that wasn't the word that was used at the time. so then it was anti-douche. So douche has a bit of a, I think there's a stigma associated with the word douche, but what you are using it for with the herbs.
And you also promote it from an enema perspective. So can you talk a little bit about herbal douching and herbal enemas, why you would choose one over the other and what are the reasons why we would want to do either of those?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (33:31.586)
Yeah, I think this is such a great question and I'm so glad to have the chance to talk about it because there's always nuance and there's always with any treatment picking the right moment. But I want to say one more thing about Dewy Fruit if I can. I just want to let people know that Dewy Fruit is a bestseller and it won the first place at the International Herb Symposium in the product competition in 2020.
Kim (33:45.545)
Please.
Kim (33:55.153)
Amazing.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (33:56.571)
And the panel was all people like vice presidents and presidents of some of North America's biggest herbal medicine companies. And there were half men on the panel. And I just want people to know that even though it's so supportive of the vagina, men love it too, gay men love it too. So it really is for everybody when it comes to being a sex lube and sensory enhancer.
Kim (34:24.925)
That's amazing. Congratulations. That's huge.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (34:27.374)
Thank you, yes. And it's hard to keep it on the shelf. So, you I sell it to licensed practitioners, whether you're pelvic floor therapy or Chinese medicine, we even have some psychotherapists who are working with people who've been through sexual trauma who stock it. And so it's hard to keep it on the shelf once you've introduced it to people. And that's why we have the little...
boxes too so they can try it. So I'm going to show you, this is one of the herbal steam
Dr Phiona Gitsham (35:05.26)
and you have inside a big bag of herbs, there's several different kits, different herbal formulas for different things and there's four pages worth of instructions inside them for how to do the vaginal steam or how to do a vaginal douche or how to do an anal douche or how to do a penis and testicle soak or how to do a bath soak. So this could be skin conditions, this could be men, women, all genders, this could be
for the rectum and anal health as well or for the vagina and so I do go into a lot of detail with the instructions for that and so to your question so we'll talk about vaginal douching and then maybe a little about anal douching if you want so I totally agree you don't want to over douche
Kim (35:56.906)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (36:04.728)
the vagina and you really would only do it minimally. Maybe let's say there's a candida overgrowth and there's a lot of discharge and there's a lot of symptoms. It's very itchy or it's very painful, burning, stinging, itching, inflamed, red, the tissues are thinning, maybe even tearing on the vulva.
Sometimes if it's like that, it can be helpful to do the douche with the herbs because the herbs, so you're making like a herbal tea. I also specify what temperature you want it to be at for each application. You know, we use a different temperature for testicles than what we would use for vagina or a steam. And so you might want to do a douche just, there's a syringe inside with a catheter tip that helps you to squirt and insert and
You might want to just rinse out the environment once or twice over one or two days. And then it's important to follow up with something like dewy fruit or, you know, where you are replenishing the healthy bacteria. So it's kind of like mopping the dirty floor, but also replenishing the seal that needs to be there. I don't know if that was, that's probably a bad example, but it's the same if we're doing it in our gut.
you know, or if you have to take antibiotics or something, you know you're going to be killing good bacteria or wiping out the bacteria. So the important part is the follow-up of replenishing with them. And I really only think douching should be done sparingly.
in that respect and I will mention at this point that at the moment there is just Dewy Fruit but because I'm so into I've been very into using select probiotics for all kinds of medical treatments I also have them in a facial treatment for acne and it's obviously not the virginal bio and probiotics it's a whole different crew but I am making a line of additional gynecology products
Dr Phiona Gitsham (38:13.334)
and products for men and products for rectal health that are little cacao butter.
like suppositories, so things that you would insert either in the vagina or in the rectum or that men would use as like a rub-on kind of treatment. And they'll be for a whole range of gynecology conditions. In terms of the probiotics will be in the vagina group of...
products and so let's say there will be one that is for specifically for bacterial vaginosis or a candida that will be more even more focused lesser the herbs that are in are also more focused on that so when they're available they're going to be great to also follow up with if you do any douching because they'll be more specific but there'll also be things for fertility things for something painful like endometriosis where we get really targeted and we take the emphasis of
the sex lube and we just put it on a piece of medicine that you can insert that does the biome, the tissue health as well as the herbal medicine that needs to be delivered to correct the issue.
Kim (39:32.606)
So is, is that you sort of use the term steaming as well as douching. So douching would be, as you said, insert and squirt. So that would be something that's actually placed into the vagina and squirted and that is sort of almost flushing it out different from vaginal steaming, yoni steaming as it's somehow or sometimes referred to. So you could also use the same herbs in a steaming capacity. that accurate?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (39:58.786)
Yeah, they started off as vaginal steaming kits and you know steaming, vaginal steaming or mother steaming as it's been called in China I think has a history in a number of...
ancient medicines, not just Asia, but there is a history of these kinds of gynecology products and applications. so they started off as steaming kits, but then I thought, you know, I've made this beautiful herb kit and I've got one that's for restoring the biome. So you could use it for steaming or douching if you had something like genital herpes. But it's also really helpful if you had something like
a skin infection like scabies, you can put the same herbal formula in your bath and bathe in it. So I started to realize they were more adaptable and I made them, I just put in all, that's why the instructions are four pages so that we can say, you can...
do vaginal steam or you can do a penis soak. This one for blood stagnation is like a basic formula for vaginal steaming where it helps to get out old blood and to just kind of replenish the fresh cycle of blood. Steaming of herbs allows only a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of the natural oils that would be in the herbs to also rise up with the steam.
as well as the other know, medicinals in the herbs that get absorbed in the tissues you know, the steam gets absorbed in the inner thighs and the vulva and the lips and around the perianal region as well so it's not necessarily that a whole lot of the steam is going to make it all the way up to the cervix but it seems to have this effect where you know, our skin is our largest organ and it's very sensitive and it's very absorbent.
Kim (41:48.746)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (41:56.913)
and steaming is really wonderful for lot of conditions.
Kim (42:02.945)
Yeah, I think it's such a beautiful, amazing practice. And I have another episode of somebody who had created sort of a more modern day version of a it's a steam seat she felt she calls it's very temperature controlled to have some red light therapy in it. And when I shared this on social media, I was blasted. And it's it was, I found it kind of interesting and funny because I had red light.
I was shining red light on my vulva post surgery when I had a rectocele repair and everybody was running out to buy that red light. And I share lots, I share everything because I think if it's something that I would do and if it's something that I think could be beneficial, I want people to know about it. The more we know, the more we can make the better choice for our own bodies. And when I shared this steam seat, the divisiveness and the vitriol from people,
about this practice, I was shocked, like it again, I found it kind of comical, because I can share so many other things, and everybody just eats it up. But this one thing, there are two, I don't want to name them, but there's a very well known doctor, and then there's a very well known influencer. And it was basically the people who were in either one of those people's camps, some of them were supporting it 100%. And the other ones were, there's no research, and you're going to burn yourself and scold yourself. And so I found it.
it's sort of indicative of the world right now. I feel like the world is very divisive and we can't talk openly about different opinions or different strategies or beliefs without somebody feeling attacked in a way. So anyway, I just found it interesting because I think it's an incredibly soothing practice. I actually wish that I had known more about it when I was postpartum. I wish that I'd used it more from a post-op.
healing perspective as well. just think that is such a, it's honoring, it's a practice you're honoring your body and it can provide so many benefits. And again, with the, with somebody who has your knowledge, who is also bringing in that herbal piece, the power of herbs is amazing. I know very little, only having been a patient of Chinese medicine, but the benefits I have seen from herbs.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (44:09.634)
Mm.
Kim (44:31.134)
is so powerful and so I really love the work that you're doing.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (44:35.0)
Thank you. Well, I have a little response for the anti-steamers. You don't just do it randomly and scold yourself on the steam. Like, I have four pages of instructions. I specify temperatures. I specify how to do it, how to test. You know, it's like saying nobody should ever cook because they could burn themselves or you could cut yourself doing life prep. Yeah, you could.
but you learn how to do these things. And no, know, ride a bike, you might fall off. So, you know, I first learned about steaming from Mayan medicine and just to speak to the power of it.
Kim (45:07.392)
Yep. And you follow the instructions.
Kim (45:18.605)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (45:23.224)
Mayan midwifery is very advanced. Indigenous Mayan women were even denied access to birthing in hospitals as recently as 1990s. They would be left on the steps.
outside the hospitals and Mayan midwifery is has very developed you know they've been developing it for hundreds if not thousands of years I don't know exactly but they have techniques for I mean there would be a lot of people in the pelvic health industry worlds that know about Mayan abdominal massage and they have techniques to
with massage to move ligaments and help to lift up prolapsing organs to put them back into their correct position. They have techniques to manually turn babies that are posterior prior to delivery which can save women's life. mean before modern medicine support during labor and baby delivery one in five women would die in childbirth.
And the rate is not that high in Mayan culture because of their very developed and advanced gynecology and midwifery practices. And I would say that it was Mayan vaginal steaming that really spread the word across the world. And then, you know, I learned from some Chinese medical scholars and specialists who are like, yeah, well, we have mentioned of things like this in these ancient texts and, you know, more and more texts are being translated as
Kim (47:03.02)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (47:04.42)
well into English you know over the past couple of decades so that's my response.
Kim (47:10.101)
Yeah, yeah, I just think it's a yeah, I think it's amazing. I love I love my abdominal massage. I've had that practitioner perform the therapy on me. I've also done it myself. You can learn some of the techniques to do from a home perspective, I think. I just feel like there's so much wisdom that is in these in so many different cultures and traditions in the world that get
shamed because they're not RCT trials and there's no pharmaceutical backing and all of that. There's a place for everything and I don't think that we should shut the door just because there isn't an RCT or a million RCT control studies. I think we can take the wisdom from cultures that have been using this, as you say, for sometimes thousands of years.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (47:50.691)
I know.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (48:00.068)
Yeah and if I may divert for another couple of minutes before we get to brace the base on this topic you know one of the methods I use in my lab to extract herbs is spagyric alchemy and when people think of what is alchemy you know they're thinking of some dude in the middle ages trying to make gold and making some toxic metal thing and poisoning themselves but you know it's come a really long way since then and that's thanks to Paracelsus 500 years ago who is now considering
the father of toxicology and one of the pioneers of modern pharmacology and he took what was the organic chemistry known
in alchemy which has you know thousands of years behind it back through Egypt through the Islamic world through Asia alchemy has worked its way through pretty much all cultures it doesn't belong to any one culture and Paracelsus was like well I want to focus all this organic chemistry on making medicinals using plants using herbal medicine using biologicals like eggs or animal
parts and also using minerals. And that's something that people are more afraid of. at that time, this was the beginning of modern pharmacology. so aspirin is pretty much isolating the compounds that work from the herb willow bark.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (49:38.434)
Digoxin, a well-known, very serious heart condition medication, is isolating compounds from the plant, foxglove. There are so many examples, I won't go through them all, but there was a point in time where herbal medicine was then sort of separated from the developing knowledge of chemistry and pharmacology, and that's only a few hundred years ago.
It's not thousands of years old like all these other tried and tested natural medicines are. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with, you know, pharmaceutical medicine. I think there is a place for it. But it is based on herbal medicine. And I just want to say how strategic it was to name the herbalists as witches and burn them.
to shift the power from the hands of the female herbalists into the male doctors. You know, but there were meant plenty of men burnt as well, but that's a whole other podcast topic I know.
Kim (50:32.663)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (50:39.844)
Chemistry at this point is for geric alchemy. We've now had in the last hundred years chemists, people with chemist degrees that are alchemists that are doing plant extracts that are making, I have a product where there's an oil of amethyst in it. And we know there's no oil in an amethyst crystal, but a crystal is minerals. It's got things in there like calcium. It's got minerals that we can need in our body and have in our body. And it's got other things. And so there is a method of
grinding a crystal, mixing it with a vegetable solvent, you know, much like we would consider alcohol, but slightly different, and in that reaction between the minerals of the amethyst and the solvent, and there's a whole lot more to this process, I'm very much oversimplifying it, and oil forms in the reaction, and that oil, which now we can do modern tests on,
is anti-inflammatory for the skin.
and non-toxic, you know, so there are in these methods that I use to make spagyric tinctures and extracts that they're more there has been, you know, another, especially in the last 50 years, but I would say maybe going back a hundred years, we've had real chemists actually doing the modern research to try and verify and validate and test these alchemical methods and say, well, you know, is this is a spagyric tincture different to a standard tincture?
and are they both medicinal or is there anything toxic going on? And it turns out that spagyric methods are really highly bioavailable, non-toxic, and that they evolve the medicinal compounds from what was into the plant into an even higher form that makes them even more medicinal and often safer to take than say a standard tincture.
Kim (52:39.6)
Can you spell the word that you're saying? Spederic, is that how you say that?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (52:42.73)
Spagyric alchemy. Yeah, S-P-A-G-Y-R-I-C. Spagyric alchemy. And so Paracelsus added the word spagyric to the word alchemy, which gives it this combined meaning of using alchemical methods to make a medicinal.
Kim (52:50.992)
Hey, I've never heard that term before.
Kim (53:03.536)
Very cool.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (53:05.474)
And that's when alchemy switched from goldmongering to making medicines. It's just going through a kind of a renaissance at this time and coming back. you'll start to hear more and more people who are making spiduric products. And once you've tried them, often people are like, well, that that was amazing.
Kim (53:13.722)
Very cool.
Yeah.
Kim (53:28.966)
Very cool. Okay, so before we wrap up, we have to talk about your other product. You have many, but the ones that we're focusing on today of Brace the Base. So tell us what was the inspiration of creating this and what actually is it and who does it help?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (53:32.772)
Praise.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (53:43.916)
Let's show it. So it's in a bottle with a pump lid and it pumps a really tiny amount of oil out which is the right amount. You can use several pumps but
So brace the base is a mixture of Chinese herbs and an amino acid into several oils that will go you put it either around the anus or inside the rectum it's for hemorrhoids, anal fissures like a chronic tear that won't heal that keeps re-tearing. You can also use it for something like a rectocele where there is sinking. In Chinese medicine we have this term
sinking chi that is relevant to any form of prolapse the chi is sinking where it should be the tissues muscles tendons should be able to hold up right but it's sinking so part of the formula contains herbs that actually raise the chi as well but it also has some things in there that are helpful if let's say you have rectocele or let's say you have an infection because there is a tear or a cut internally or a hemorrhoid
And this can become painful but also you can start to feel a little sick because there is now some dysbiosis going on in the rectum as well. So brace the base addresses all those things and because it's in oils it will soften and lubricate the stool to make it easier to evacuate and go.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (55:21.588)
make it easier to get it out. So let's say if you have something like recto seal where there is a sinking pocket inside the rectum then you would insert it and I send it out with a little pipette as well that you can suck a little bit up into and then squirt it in there. And yeah so it it's very soothing.
Kim (55:24.049)
Mm-hmm.
Kim (55:42.707)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (55:49.528)
relieving and I recommend that people one of the main things with something like hemorrhoids or an anal fissure or even rectocele is that they recur they don't just heal in a week even if you think I put that stuff on it and it healed and now I'm good I recommend for people to use the whole bottle keep using it it will last about four months or so five months even depending on how much you use and
keep using it so that the tissues can fully heal and restore their integrity and their musculature, you know, their muscle function. And the amino that I've included is L-arginine and L-arginine is like a muscle building.
amino acid, really important of the muscle building protein profile and I was thinking about using it and when I'm thinking about using things like aminos and whatnot I go and read all the research first that would maybe back up my formulation plan and I discovered that the part of the body that is the best at absorbing L-Arginine is the rectum.
Kim (56:59.76)
Hmm, interesting.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (57:00.108)
It should be anally administered. I know people before they go to the gym, know they're adding it to their proteins and everything but honestly, it's best in the butt. So I thought definitely that's going in there and I think that just helps the herbs and the oils do their job and helps give the message to the body that this is what we're doing here. This is the instruction coming with this.
Kim (57:05.905)
Yeah.
Kim (57:16.69)
interesting.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (57:29.408)
oily herbal ingredient that's being rubbed into the skin here.
Kim (57:36.606)
Can it help internal and external hemorrhoids? Like if somebody has inflamed external hemorrhoids, and there's also some people who may have, know, it was inflamed and now it's almost just like a residual skin tag, so to speak, where it was kind of like it was where the hemorrhoid was. Can it help with that as well?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (57:54.5)
I don't think that it will make the skin tag fall off but it definitely heals the blood vessels and the tears and
so you can put it on the affected region. And it's got, it's based, the leading herb in it is turmeric curcumin. And so if you've ever had a hemorrhoid or any rectal issues like that, you'll probably one of the first herbs to come across that you've been recommended. And so it is like glowing yellow green with curcuminoids when I'm making it.
By the time I've formulated it, it's more of a pale yellow oil. But I would just mention that because it can stain if you're applying it externally. So you can just use like a panty liner or something like that. But often the butt cheeks prevent it from touching the, there's enough space between the cheeks and the actual anus to prevent it from staining your underwear.
Kim (59:02.898)
Yep.
Kim (59:08.285)
Well, I had raging hemorrhoids in both of my pregnancies. And in my first pregnancy, my midwives had recommended potato slices. And I was supposed to put, which is a bit weird because potatoes are, not like you can, like it's a small area and you're big potato. So it was sort of, you've wedged in a little bit of potato, but I don't know, it seemed to help when I was able to get them reduced.
before I gave birth. In my second one, I was not able, I used the same protocol and I was not able to get them reduced. But do you know what is it about potato that would potentially, do you know?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (59:46.968)
I actually don't know and I'm thinking now I wonder if that would help as well for the skin tags. I'm gonna go and look it up because I know that potato peel was also an old remedy for warts, for skin warts. So I really don't know what that is but I will be looking it up too.
Kim (59:59.7)
Interesting. Yeah, anyway, well.
Kim (01:00:07.824)
Yeah cool all right you can report back but so where can people find out more of about about you and potentially work with you but also find your amazing products?
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:00:10.824)
Hahaha
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:00:19.33)
Yeah, so I am on Instagram. It's at bioherbology and that you can come to the website bioherbology.com and there's quite a lot of information on the website. I've got a page that's about some of the featured ingredients I like to use. I've got a page that's about spediatric alchemy and the lab processes and I've got a page that's about me and then there's the shop. And then I am on Facebook.
There's my personal page, Fiona Gicham. You can add me, but also there's a biohobology page. I just find that Facebook doesn't give much exposure to business pages. So I put a lot on my personal page and then tag the business page. And I recently started about a year ago, I reluctantly joined TikTok. So there's biohobology on TikTok. There's not that many posts there yet, but I am trying. I've also started
Kim (01:01:17.874)
I know, I'm in that same boat.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:01:19.972)
you
I've also more recently started a YouTube channel and again it's at Biohobology on YouTube and so I am also a professional astrologer and I'm mentioning that because within my content it's not just product ad after product ad after product ad I try to keep it interesting and also give a lot of content that people find useful and helpful so some posts are about astrology and what the hell is going on
Kim (01:01:24.67)
Good.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:01:50.857)
and some posts will be about a product and teaching people what you know what this product is about and some posts will just be about something to do with herbal medicine that I love like I recently did a post about nutmeg being a psychedelic because it's pumpkin spice season. You know I'm not using nutmeg in any of my products or anything but you know I'm a herbalist and I like to talk about these things.
So that's the combination that you'll get and there's also some free meditations that I've created and they're guided meditations they're on the YouTube channel so there's going to be more more of everything. On the YouTube channel I am going to be doing a little video about each product where I speak for five minutes on about each product but also on the website you'll find there's I've written a lot on each product page.
Kim (01:02:30.11)
Very cool.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:02:47.49)
I really try to give a lot of information and if you send me questions I'll answer them and if you're a practitioner click on wholesale and put in your application form.
Kim (01:03:00.39)
Awesome. I will have all the links down below in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom. I'm super fascinated by everything you were talking about. Yeah. And I invite people to go check out your amazing products. Thank you.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:03:15.5)
Thank you so much for having me on Kim. And also, yeah, I'm going to when I share this, I'm going to link your work as well for because there's such compatibility for people who are doing acupuncture and East Asian medicine. With the work that you're doing, 75 % of the patients of East Asian medicine are women and fertility and perimenopause.
And just basically gynaecological health is a huge piece of what East Asian medicine is treating, especially in North America.
Kim (01:03:57.982)
Yeah, yeah, amazing. Thank you for your work.
Dr Phiona Gitsham (01:04:03.096)
Thank you.
