Ep. #257: Can Spices, Herbs, and Essential Oils Improve Your Health?

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Guten Tag, meine Freunde, Mike here back with another episode of the podcast. And this time we’re talking spices, herbs, and essential oils. Now you’ve probably heard that these things can do many wonderful things for your body, like balance your hormones, reduce inflammation, improve your gut health, speed up fat loss, and much more.

So make sure you tune How true are these things though? Can you really help optimize your [00:01:00] body? That’s like a trendy thing right now. Total body, total human optimization! By sprinkling little goodies on your meals and huffing nice smelling oils. Can the pigment in curry really improve your joint health for example?

Adding cinnamon to your oatmeal really help control your blood sugar levels or reduce your risk of developing diabetes? Is garlic the super duper, antioxidant, immune boosting, cancer fighting, wunder spice that many people say it is? In this episode, we are going to explore all of that in more with Curtis Frank, who is the co founder and who was the lead researcher and writer over at examine.

com and is now the director of research for my supplement company, Legion Athletics. And Curtis has spent a lot of time over the years researching spices, herbs, and essential oils, just because it’s been something he’s personally interested in. And [00:02:00] he has a lot of insight to share. As you will see, a lot of the marketing hype around these things is unwarranted.

They’re not going to change your life, no matter how many of them you include in your daily regimen. And no matter how many of them you include in your daily regimen, no matter At what dosage you include them in, but there definitely are a handful of winners that do deserve some attention. And Curtis thinks that we’ll actually get more and more attention going forward as more research is done.

If you’ve ever wondered if spices like turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, cocoa and rosemary. And if you ever wondered if essential oils like lemon rose and lavender can actually do something, if they can actually improve your health and wellbeing in some way, then this episode is for you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills.

But, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of [00:03:00] mine. Specifically, my 100 percent natural joint supplement Fortify. Now, Fortify helps keep your joints healthy, functional, and pain free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss, and its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and swelling, and to help keep your cartilage Healthy, strong, and intact.

All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a 4. 5 star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement, and another 90 plus reviews on my website, also with a 4. 5 star average. If you want healthy, functional, and pain free joints that can withstand the demands of your active lifestyle, then you want to head over to www.

legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Fortify today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon [00:04:00] code podcast at checkout and you will save 10 percent on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this.

You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don’t have to return the products. You don’t have to fill out forms. Peace. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. You really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet.

And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let’s get to the show. Mr. Curtis Frank, welcome back to my illustrious podcast. How’s it going, man? Pretty good. You should feel very privileged to be on the show.

Oh, most definitely. All right. So [00:05:00] what are we talking about today? We’re talking about spices and herbs and essential oils, a bit random. I know people listen to me. I’m like, huh, how does that all come together? And yeah, it is random. It just came together and talking with Curtis where we could do as thing.

Of course, we can always tap Curtis’s immense brain for supplementation knowledge, but he also knows a lot of things about other things like this stuff. And I thought that would be a fun discussion as well. And also because it is trendy, essential oils are probably, I don’t know. I think it’s both of them.

All that stuff is pretty trendy right now. The spices that can insert random health benefit here, herbs that can. Insert random health benefit here or essential oils because it sounds easy, right? It’s just Oh sure. I can put some Rosemary in my whatever. Like I put some Rosemary in my big Mac that makes it good.

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. Like marketing wise, it’s just, you need a new label every now and then. And since curcumin from turmeric is so popular and all that as a supplement, I should say, because it’s also technically a spice. A lot of people just went, Oh, but cinnamon is also a spice and hot pepper is also [00:06:00] a spice.

So they just try to put a lot of things under the umbrella term spice and then sell it as the health benefits of spices as if there’s something unique and interesting about spices themselves. But it’s pretty much just, you throw a few darts, then you see what shape it makes. And then you just try to make something of that shape and essential oils are the same thing, but I honestly don’t know how essential oils got so big.

It’s confusing. I know quite a bit about them and some of it’s interesting, but there is no reason why essential oils should be like alongside homeopathy. In terms of popularity, 

Mike Matthews: Let’s let’s start with the spices herbs first, then get to the oils. I think we should probably start with just some general kind of information to just educate people on what these things are, and then get to some specifics that, stuff they’ve probably heard, like what cinnamon can do for you or sage can do with you or random spicy thing like chili pepper can do for you also.

Curcumin, turmeric is another good example. [00:07:00] 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. So just to begin with a few definitions and laying some groundwork, there isn’t anything technical or botanical unique about the word spice. You can grow turmeric in the ground. You pluck it up, and it’s a root, and you just grind that root into a powder.

The moment you put it on your food, like the verb spice becomes this new designation because you’re spicing your food with it. If you put it into a pill, and you can’t taste it, it’s not really a spice. It’s just The root of a plant in a pill. So for a lot of these herbs, it’s just stuff that has at times been in our diet, just from food, not from supplements.

And then people just try to connect it because I guess it’s a nice blend between dietary supplementations and just your overall diet, health and wellbeing. It seems more marketable in that sense. But a lot of times when we approach this topic, we will have to think about the compound in question. Both when you [00:08:00] put it on food and when you put it in a capsule.

Because capsules are processed, they’re concentrated, and you don’t need to taste it. But if you put it on food, you’re going to have to taste it. For some things, like if you want to take a high dose of, let’s say, curcumin, you cannot eat that much turmeric unless you have a stomach of steel, pretty much.

And other things like cinnamon, unless you want to have the cinnamon dragon challenge and almost choke to death, then you’re going to have to go for a supplement. very much. But a lot of times there will be that division 

Mike Matthews: Or berberine, if you like the taste of vomit, then maybe you’ll like berberine.

Kurtis Frank: Oh, yeah especially that. But it’s just the whole, the herb is good as a supplement does not mean that is good as a spice in food. When we talk about supplements of cinnamon, it does not mean that putting a cinnamon stick in your tea confers the same benefits. 

Mike Matthews: So let’s talk about cinnamon.

Let’s just start there because again that’s one of the, if you go Googling around for listicles of herbs and spices, cinnamon is going to probably be on all of [00:09:00] them and they’re going to say, Oh, it will help lower your blood sugar levels and you’ll have a powerful anti diabetic effect, stuff like that.

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. So I have no problems with cinnamon to be honest. The compound in it, I believe it is going off memory, I think it’s 4 hydroxyisoleucine. Because isoleucine, one of the three branching amino acids, by itself does help deposit glucose into cells. And the cinnamon component that is similar to it also does this.

If you were to take a cinnamon supplement alongside anything that increases blood sugar, you can help put that blood sugar into target tissue. I do not know if it specifically prefers muscle over fat. Maybe in a contextual setting, like if you take it after a workout, just because that’s when your muscles are trying to eat everything anyways.

But extending it to a long term anti diabetic effect, you could definitely argue that it has an anti diabetic effect, but it would be weak magnitude [00:10:00] wise. 

Mike Matthews: And how much cinnamon are we talking about here to have any effect? Is it an amount that is actually feasible that you’d want to eat? Or is like you said, is it just way too much, you’d see something you’d have to supplement with.

Kurtis Frank: From what I recall, the doses that you could actually eat for food or if you put a cinnamon stick in your tea, very minor effects. I’m not going to say that a cinnamon stick in tea is useless. It could be beneficial, but most studies that show like effects big enough for us to actually care about use the dietary supplements.

So the idea that if you put cinnamon in your apple pie, it can be like a slightly less diabetic, that’s a pipe dream. It’s just, no, it’s not going to work. 

Mike Matthews: And I guess that’s the, so you can feel better about my apple pie, 

Kurtis Frank: yes. I’ve heard some people just like to have that whole thing.

It’s Oh, if I put it in this spice, then it’s not as much junk food. Is it? It’s You went from 100 percent junk food to 99 percent junk food when he had the option of zero. 

Mike Matthews: So yeah, missing the force for the trees here. [00:11:00] Makes sense. What are some other spices and herbs that you think are worth mentioning?

Because they are in like, in the case of cinnamon, we’re like, yeah, sure. It’s fine, but it’s not what many people. Say it’s going to be realistically speaking, practically speaking. So it could be a couple of examples of those or examples of some spices and herbs that you think are actually pretty neat because you can actually eat them in amounts that can make a difference.

Even if it’s a slight difference in some slight way, 

Kurtis Frank: if we’re going on the ones that are only relevant when we’re talking about food intake, the two that I find most interesting to talk about first are saffron and peppermint note that peppermint is mostly the oil. But if you just have like peppermint leaves or whatever.

They have oil in them, because peppermint is really good at relaxing muscles, and when you eat it, it’s going to be the esophagus, it’s going to be the stomach and all that. If you have gas, like GERD, esophageal reflux disease, peppermint is going to be your worst enemy, [00:12:00] because it actually will relax the sphincter separating the stomach and the esophagus.

It could also be useful for irritable bowel syndrome, but the studies on it tend to use the actual supplemental form rather than the food. Diffuse esophageal spasms. I haven’t actually met somebody with that problem. And what is that problem? 

What’s the summary? It’s basically when your esophagus has spasms.

Mike Matthews: Okay. 

Kurtis Frank: But basically peppermint is actually very good. For alleviating that just because it’s a muscle relaxant and even if it’s not well absorbed from the intestines It has to pass your esophagus to the stomach and then actually go in your intestines and it affects those muscles, too 

Mike Matthews: right 

Kurtis Frank: For any sort of cramping associated with the small intestine, stomach, and esophagus, there is an argument that peppermint, more so the oil but also just as put in food, could be helpful.

And the best part is that you don’t need to worry about the classically really bad absorption [00:13:00] rates of some of these herbs because you don’t actually need to absorb it. If the throat and stomach are your targets, right? Beyond that, saffron as I mentioned earlier It’s interesting because the dose is obscenely low like You go to a grocery store you buy saffron and you don’t get much of the spice And even that would be like five servings of a supplemental dose.

And it seems to have some studies suggesting that it could affect depressive symptoms. It interacts with serotonin signaling, but it also has potential toxicity. And while the studies are not really, we don’t really know the magnitude of antidepressant effects or what is causing the toxicity, so it’s not something I can recommend at this point in time.

But the dose of saffron that does have these effects is the dose that you can get when spicing food. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. What about turmeric? Curcumin, obviously super popular. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. So for that out of all the effects of curcumin, because curcumin has very bad absorption [00:14:00] rates. And, 

Mike Matthews: oh, sorry. First, let’s just everybody listening.

Turmeric is the spice that gives curry its color, just in case anybody doesn’t know, listening. 

Kurtis Frank: And curcumin is the main component. of turmeric, 

Mike Matthews: right? 

Kurtis Frank: There’s a lot of benefits out there related to curcumin, but curcumin by itself has really bad absorption rates, which is why we supplement it. And I’ve usually pair it with either black pepper extract or put in like a phosphoryl mycel, which is basically a little carrier package.

But if you just have turmeric by itself, you’re not going to be absorbing much of the curcumin, which is okay if you’re talking about curcumin’s anti inflammatory effects in the gut. There is some evidence to suggest that if you simply have a nice meal of curry with a bunch of turmeric in it, it could potentially be gut healthy in the small intestines, usually for inflammatory disorders.

But that’s pretty much the only thing I can think of where turmeric as a spice in foods. is beneficial [00:15:00] for everything else. You’re going to need to use curcumin as a supplement. 

Mike Matthews: And specifically, you’re going to need curcumin with a carrier package, so to speak. Because there are supplements out that are just pure, even just pure turmeric.

Like I know that’s a turmeric supplements are popular and that’s all it is. It’s just ground up turmeric. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. That’s just stupid. If you just have ground up turmeric and a pill, then it’s literally the exact same powder at the grocery store. 

There’s nothing unique about it. And unless they’re enhanced some way, that is just going to be useless as a supplement.

We use piperidine from black pepper extract in fortify because that’s how we enhance the absorption. 

Mike Matthews: And people listening fortify is our joint supplement and it contains curcumin again with the molecule from the black pepper extract. So you actually can absorb it. And so it can help your joints as opposed to possibly helping your gut and not really being able to do much else.

What about garlic? Let’s talk garlic. That’s of course a very popular, it’s tasty, but also a lot of [00:16:00] people have heard that it’s very healthy for you as well. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. And now we can see cause I like garlic, of course, I’m more than willing to just talk endlessly about the benefits of garlic.

And I would recommend two cloves a day, at least two cloves a day keeps the everything away. Pretty much like it’s a very, it’s a jack of all trades. Supplement. It just does most things in the body. It’s not strong enough to be a pharmaceutical on any parameter, but it’s a step in the right direction on multiple different parameters, such as boosting inflammation, 

Mike Matthews: Reducing inflammation, right?

Kurtis Frank: I was going to say boosting immunity. For those who don’t know, inflammation and immunity are highly linked, and there aren’t many things that both reduce inflammation while boosting immunity. Those two things should not happen at the same time. Very few things dabble in it, and in the case of garlic, it can dabble in it because it’s not the strongest anti inflammatory.

It’s a little bit of an anti inflammatory, nothing to write home about, but it does boost immunity at the same time. May also improve blood flow just due to the sulfur that it contains. [00:17:00] And also some, it’s back and forth evidence on how it affects cholesterols, triglycerides, and then it could also potentially just, alleviate fatigue, especially if you just like bite into the garlic raw.

Mike Matthews: Wake you up. 

Kurtis Frank: Not many people are going to do that. Yeah, it will wake you up like I actually did that as a pre workout for a while and it had to stop like 

Mike Matthews: a pre workout. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah, like I just went to the gym, like I had to make sure it wasn’t busy because, if you have a bunch of people in the gym, you don’t want to just be like biting garlic.

You go, Hey, buddy, can I use 

Mike Matthews: the yellow? 

Kurtis Frank: No, it’s a way to get a clear bench, obviously. But yeah, I actually had to stop that though, because I did get low blood pressure through my workouts. Yeah. So it’s one of the few things where you can test whether or not it’s able to reduce blood pressure, because if you take too much, you get lightheaded, which is bad.

Don’t do that. But it’s nice to be able to test whether or not something works just by being a little bit stupid. And garlic can do that. Reduce blood pressure, just improve your cholesterol and lipid profile. May also reduce [00:18:00] arterial calcification, so It’s like batting averages. It’s hitting all the balls for improving cardiovascular health.

Just not hitting a home run on any of them. That immunity reduce fatigue. It’s just has all these good properties associated with it. And the best part is you can just buy the garlic itself. You don’t need a supplement, like if you want to get a supplement because you don’t want to eat garlic all the time, you can do aged garlic extract is pretty much the exact same thing, maybe a little bit better because it’s used in most studies and we can refer to that evidence. But yeah, two cloves a day, just overall benefits. Only real thing is I wouldn’t even call it a spice, really. I’ve never called garlic a spice in my life.

It’s just garlic. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I don’t know. I guess by definition, right? A spice. The dictionary says that. It’s a aromatic or pungent vegetable substance used to flavor food. 

Kurtis Frank: Okay, technically garlic would be a spice, but nah, I’m Italian. Garlic is garlic. It is its own category. You cannot move it from there.

I love 

Mike Matthews: garlic too. It’s also of course very easy to eat because it’s very [00:19:00] easy to work into pretty much any type of meal that you like to eat. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah, just like dice it up, throw it in at the last second and you can leave it out for longer if you don’t like the garlicky taste and it doesn’t actually impair the effects of the supplement.

It actually enhances it to expose it to oxygen. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. What about something like rosemary? Another one of my personal favorite spices, at least just by taste. I think it’s delicious. 

Kurtis Frank: Oh, yeah, definitely with meat. So rosemary is an interesting one because it doesn’t have too many human studies on it, but the bio active in it is called rosmarinic acid.

Yeah. And rosmarinic acid is a pretty interesting molecule because it’s a strong antioxidant. It’s well absorbed. It stays in the body for a while. So the pharmacokinetic profile of it, like when you eat it, it goes to your body is able to do things and rat studies show that it can be pretty good just for general health and maybe even cognitive effects.

It’s something to be on the lookout for in the next five years, whatever you may see rosmarinic acid and a lot more [00:20:00] dietary supplements just because of the evidence that’s building up. 

Mike Matthews: What are your thoughts? Is there any predictions just based on your understanding? 

Kurtis Frank: Honestly, remember in the past, how a resveratrol was the most popular supplement.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Kurtis Frank: And then there’s some evidence of some research being fabricated, then like everybody just stopped caring about resveratrol. And now we’re hyping curcumin up like beyond just means curcumin is good, but it’s not as good as all the claims people are saying. I personally believe that this is This has invited people to fabricate some curcumin studies.

I have seen personally some really badly conducted ones. And so I do believe that there will be some point in the future where curcumin is mocked because of some false studies fabricated about it. It will be, like, shunned, even though it still has benefits. Like resveratrol still has benefits, but no one talks about it anymore.

And then people are going to move on to the next group. Cool looking molecule. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Once, once something loses, like it’s magic bullet status, then people like, 

Kurtis Frank: yeah, but [00:21:00] rosemary acid is one of the top contenders for me to replace curcumin. Once it gets thrown out of the spotlight. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting.

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. So as you were saying with with Rosemary kind of tangented you. 

Kurtis Frank: The thing is the studies we have on it right now are with isolated rosmarinic acid. I’m uncertain if rosemary as a spice will be able to confer the benefits. Because the studies that use rosemary acid in humans do use a al low dose.

There’s one using between 50 to 200 milligrams, but rosemary seems to have a smallish amount of rosemary acid. If you were to like just take three sprigs of rosemary and eat them straight up, you could probably get the benefits. But that’s not how we spice things with rosemary. We put the rosemary on something, let the aromatics go through the meat, and then we throw the sprigs out.

Mike Matthews: Or if you’re weird like me, you just put a bunch in your vegetables and eat it all. 

Kurtis Frank: Oh, then yeah, you could probably be in the benefits. Yes. I was [00:22:00] like, yeah, because it’s going to be the aromatic oils that are leaving rosemary and infusing the meat. The rosmarinic acid is not an oil, so it’s going to be staying in the plant for the most part.

But yeah, if you just straight up eat the rosemary, you can probably get the benefits from the plant itself, maybe not even need a supplement, but there’s still a lot of unknowns about it. So we need to just twiddle our thumbs and hope for the best. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. How about ginger or the one that, is anti inflammatory.

You hear that a lot with ginger. 

Kurtis Frank: I think for ginger, if you want to get the benefits of the spice itself, rather than a supplement, You can only really get the anti nausea benefits, because once again, these are benefits pertaining to the gut and the intestines where absorption rates do not matter much, and there have been studies on ginger where it helps with nausea just when you put it with food.

For other effects, you would probably either need like a concentrated supplement. And what are some of those other 

Mike Matthews: effects if you were to take a ginger supplement? 

Kurtis Frank: One of the most interesting ones and the [00:23:00] highest dose of ginger that like you could ever have is ginger has been proven to increase testosterone.

Oh. But you need about 50 grams of the powder. Yeah, no one’s going to be eating that. That’s and 

Mike Matthews: For people listening, if for example, if you take. Pulse. So two scoops of pulse is, let’s say about 25 grams of powder, give or take. So it’s like a four scoops of pulse dose here. That’s 

Kurtis Frank: big.

Yeah. And we could potentially find the thing in ginger that has increased testosterone and concentrate it. Yeah. So that’d be cool. But that’s a supplemental thing. That’s not a spice thing. You could say that it’s an anti inflammatory. There are some studies showing a little bit of that, but From what I can tell, they’re all using dietary supplements or the oils.

There are some using about two grams of ginger a day, which is beyond what is used as a spice, but I could definitely see people eating two grams of ginger. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Let’s say with sushi, if you’re again, weird like me, you [00:24:00] don’t use ginger to cleanse your palate. You eat it with every piece of sushi because I like to combine it.

Kurtis Frank: Oh yeah, like that would definitely help. So yeah, like I would say putting ginger in your diet. Could very well carry many of the benefits of ginger, just probably not the ones related to testosterone hormones. Anything related to sperm count. And if you ever heard about ginger being associated with fat, burning or appetite, I would not say those are pertain to the food, either claims related to nausea, anything for the throat or stomach.

And there is some talk about it helping inflammation of the intestines. So any like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, some people say ginger could help and potentially through the food. And I say potentially because the studies do not seem to be high quality. 

Mike Matthews: I see. And speaking of fat burning, which I’ve never actually heard that as a thing that ginger can help with fat burning.

But I guess if you look deep enough into the underbelly of the inner webs, you can find [00:25:00] people saying that pretty much anything helps with that burning. So what about a lot of money with that? Yeah. What about spicy stuff and fat burning? That’s a very, of course, very common claim. The spicy, the capsaicin, the spiciness, boosts your metabolism, blah, blah, blah.

Kurtis Frank: I just want to make it 100 percent clear that the perception of spiciness and the sweating that comes from eating spicy foods is completely different from the process of fat burning. Two completely different processes going on in the body. If you eat something and you immediately have the whole sweat going on from spiciness, that is not an indication of fat burning.

Some dietary supplements do include capsaicin simply because it can get people to sweat a little bit, but at the same time that it’s just a, it’s a bluff of sorts. It’s 

Mike Matthews: Like the diamine play. If I’m pronouncing that correctly, 

Kurtis Frank: It’s 

Mike Matthews: also 

Kurtis Frank: cool. It’s actually a vodamine and capsaicin work on similar pathways in the body there.

They work mostly on calcium [00:26:00] channels on neurons, but a vodamine makes you feel like you’re warmer, but it does this through altering your perceptions of warmth rather than actually freeing up energy to then be burnt as fuel. On one hand, you can go it’s just thrown in some diet in some fat burners as a bluff.

But on the other hand, you can just think, that’s damn cool. I want some Vodiamine berries for the next time winter comes around. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. But the former is why it’s why it’s included in fat burners. Just so people think that, oh, it must be working. I feel warmer, so my metabolism must really be going.

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. Plus, I also have to admit, Vodiamine is just a really cool name. 

Mike Matthews: It is pretty cool. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. And it’s an amine. It has the amine in there. It has to be like a neuroactive amine. 

Mike Matthews: Which sounds like amino, which is like amino like BCAAs and yeah. So yeah. Tyramine. Give me that. 

Kurtis Frank: Phenylalanine. Avodiamine.

Ooh. 

Mike Matthews: So back to the spiciness. I guess the long story short there is. That’s a negative eating spicy things is not [00:27:00] going to increase your metabolism and increase your fat burning. It just is going to make your mouth burn and make you sweat. If you are aggressive enough, 

Kurtis Frank: correct. There is some like a bit of evidence saying that capsaicin could have independent fat burning effects, but it’s only with supplemental doses.

Mike Matthews: Okay, 

Kurtis Frank: and even then it’s pretty weak like capsaicin is mostly the it was the first time people even knew what calcium channels on neurons were and that food could interact with it and it has a ton of studies on it because it is the it’s the research standard. If you want to know something about the perception of spiciness, you’re looking to capsaicin.

You get a general feel of what is going on. And then you go. Okay, how do we modify the capsaicin molecule to get stronger effects? If we put if you have dihydrocapsaicin, which increases the potency of the spiciness, how does that modify how capsaicin works on these sort of things? It’s a research thing.

It’s like how there’s so many studies on vitamin C. It’s just the prototypical antioxidant that you learn more about to get a basic understanding before branching out to [00:28:00] the stuff that’s actually cool. Makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it?

Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, hey, Thank you.

You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. All right. So what about cocoa? Because I’m a fan of cocoa. I like dark chocolate. 

Kurtis Frank: I honestly wouldn’t say that there are any major health benefits associated with it. If there are going to be health benefits associated with the Epicatechin content, it’s going to be when you consume 75 grams of 90 percent [00:29:00] dark chocolate or something around that range.

so much. But missing the force for the trees here. You just ate 75 grams of dark chocolate for the purpose of like fat burn and cardiovascular health, which the chocolate is itself going to work against. If you want to eat chocolate, fine. But if you want the specific health benefits of like the double negative sign epicatechin, you probably want to opt for a supplement or just.

Except the fact that you’re going to have some fats and carbs with it. 

Mike Matthews: Makes sense. 

Kurtis Frank: And of course, if you want milk chocolate or a white chocolate, you are straight out of luck. It has to be like 80 to 90 percent dark chocolate. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So that makes sense on cocoa. Is there anything else on your list? Those are the things that I wanted to ask you about.

Again, I know you do your own little prep for this. Is there anything else on your list of spices and herbs that you wanted to talk about before we move on to oils? 

Kurtis Frank: Nothing that I could like on the little list I have. There’s. Just a bunch of herbs, they’re just useless, pretty much. I think we covered most of the ones that actually have potential benefit for modifying one’s diet, [00:30:00] but for the most part, understand that herbs are herbs and if you want the benefits, go for a supplement beforehand.

Garlic is pretty much the only one where I outright advocate the food over supplements because cost practicality and if you don’t like garlic, you are a vampire without a soul. 

Mike Matthews: Those are out there. All right, so let’s move on then. Let’s talk about essential oils. 

Kurtis Frank: I like I know a lot about essential oils from a scientific standpoint, but the entire field just confuses me a lot.

Like I mentioned this to you earlier, but I honestly think that the reason they’ve gotten so popular is because people see the word essential. and think it’s something like, oh, it’s a fish oil, but it’s an essential vitamin and mineral. And I just want to make it clear, essential is a misnomer when applied to oils.

The proper scientific way to refer to them are volatile oils, because they contain molecules in liquid form that, when you ignite them as an aromatic, turn [00:31:00] into a gas form. So they’re quite volatile when exposed to heat. Hence, volatile oils. That’s not 

Mike Matthews: going to work for marketing though, so that’s probably why that’s 

Kurtis Frank: why they went to essential.

That’s why they went to essential oils, but they’re also called ethereal oils, which, oh my God, such good name. That sounds pretty high. I’m going to start calling them ethereal oils now. It’s just so cool. 

Mike Matthews: The oils of the 

Kurtis Frank: ghosts and all that. It’s oh yeah, the lavender spirits come take me away.

That kind of stuff. 

Mike Matthews: Inhabit my 

Kurtis Frank: flesh. Yeah. Consume. But yeah, like It’s a bit weird of a topic to go, because it’s very common that you see essential oils sold alongside homeopathic remedies. And, Like I’ve always been on board of how homeopathy is just the placebo effect. And that’s stupid because that 

Mike Matthews: is that I don’t want to get off on that.

I don’t really know much about homeopathy. Is that true though? Of all of it, period. I’ve heard that’s true of definitely the stuff you’d buy [00:32:00] In the grocery store or whatever, but that individual practitioners, like there is, there, there can be some legitimacy if you have an individual practitioner who’s very educated and is create stuff specifically for you, whatever condition you’re trying to treat, or is that basically fake news?

Kurtis Frank: The only way homeopathy can have a drug effect. And just to reiterate, the only things that can affect you are placebo effects and drug effects. If you take a supplement, you get a reliable drug effect, and then the placebo effect that is additional to that, it’s up in the air. Homeopathy, by definition, has no drug effect.

The process of making something homeopathic, eliminates the drug effect. They basically look at the one rule of pharmacology. The dose makes the poison, the dose makes the medicine, and then they make a 180 and run in the opposite direction. So the process homeopathy eliminates the drug effect and can only rely on the placebo effect.

And then they just try to maximize the [00:33:00] placebo effect and you can do this With supplements that have a drug effect, like you can buy homeopathic remedy and get really hyped up about it and believe that it’s helping you. Or you can buy a proven pre workout, get hyped up, believe that it’s helping you get the same placebo effect, but you also have the pre workouts drug effect to rely on.

It’s a one two punch rather than a single jab. So because yeah, and the only way that you can make a homeopathic remedy have a drug effect is to reverse and deny the essential claim that makes something homeopathic. The process of homeopathy. will dilute something to the point where it’s just too abysmal a dose.

And the only way to get that drug effect back is to concentrate it to get the initial dose back. So by definition true homeopathy cannot have a drug effect. Any homeopathy that does have a drug effect. Is not homeopathy. It’s just a supplement. [00:34:00] 

Mike Matthews: Makes sense. Okay. So I was just that’s again. It’s an area.

I have not researched at all. So I was just curious as to your take on it. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah, because it’s a lot of things when it comes to dietary supplements and alternative health. It’s a gray area. They have to take with a little bit of prudence, but homeopathy is one. We just put your foot down. No, that’s not how things work around here.

Get out. 

Mike Matthews: You’d make a good father, Curtis. When are you going to have some children, man? 

Kurtis Frank: Oh man, I don’t know. Like someone’s going to need to bite the bullet with me. But yeah moving on to a more gray area. It’s the aromatherapy that I mentioned earlier, because you could argue a drug effect of aromatherapy.

If you think about your day so far, you have smelt things and those things you’ve smelt existed somewhere most of the time. Other times it’s just your brain playing tricks on you. And the reason you can smell things is because there was something in that thing, let’s say it’s a pile of dog shit, [00:35:00] where solid molecules just due to fermentation or heat or whatever, became a gas.

And that molecule went through the air into your nasal lining and then affected your neurons in your brain. So that’s an actual mechanical drug effect going on. And so when it comes to aromatherapy, you take actual molecules like B myrosine or carophylene, which we can prove are in the oils, you light them up, they turn into gases, and they have been detected in the rat studies, you basically hotbox someone with lavender.

You’d put a rat in a little cage, you just start pumping it in, playing some snoop in the background or something. Sick, bruh. Yeah, you hotbox the rat and you can prove that the molecules actually get into the brain. There’s more than enough evidence to say that aromatherapy could have a drug effect.

The only problems are, there are a lot of problems, but there’s two that I think of mostly. The first is that aromatherapy studies are very hard to do a proper [00:36:00] double blind trial on. Because you’re not dealing with pills, you’re dealing with aromas. A lot more prudency and creativity need to be taken when addressing homeo aromatherapy.

And, generally speaking, the studies that are more creative in how they get answers are the ones that are questioned more and do not get replicated as fast. Of course, There could be like a super large, super creative study in the near future that just send shockwaves out that happens every now and then was super creative studies, but for the most part, it’s lower quality of evidence that we would like the other problem is associative memories because if you were to put someone in a room and say we are administering a scent and that scent happens to be rose First and foremost, a lot of people will know it’s Rose.

Secondly, somebody will have different reactions to it, depending if Rose invokes memories of going to Grandma’s house, or Rose invokes memories of a [00:37:00] tragic thorning accident that they had when they were a child. 

Mike Matthews: Or maybe their first prom or something. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah, exactly, because scent is very closely linked to associative memory, so it’s hard to like just say this scent will do X in a large amount of people because you have to know about the people and how they grew up and all that.

So all of this means that when you look at aromatherapy studies, you have to have a bit more of an open mind and At the end of the day, you can’t say the conclusions as strongly as you would like, but it is most definitely possible that if you have an essential oil, That has a scent that it could potentially affect you rose lavender, and I believe lemon are the ones that they’re the ones that are most studied 

Mike Matthews: at least.

And do you want to talk about those specifically again? It’s, you can find all kinds of claims that this oil is going to help balance your hormones and that oil is going to boost your immunity and fight infection. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. I forgot that [00:38:00] the stupidity went that far. So it’s the 

Mike Matthews: magic bullet effect again, like this one supports digestion.

I’m reading this off of, I won’t say who, but one of these fake doctors, like one of these they’re chiropractors, but they say doctor. Cause they want you to think they’re an MD. And it’s one of these fake doctor websites, like boost energy levels, improve brain function. All you have to do is like sniff oils all day.

Kurtis Frank: It’s just, ugh. Lavender might be able to reduce generalized anxiety. Rose may also induce a calming effect. While Lemon Balm may potentially be a little bit stimulating. Stave off sleepiness. That is the level of expectations that you should have with aromas. Subtle alterations to how you feel. Any claim associated with cancer, any claim associated with a disease state, any claim associated with drug like effects, throw them out the window, it’s bullshit.

The effects of aromatherapy are Everyone’s [00:39:00] already felt them. You just go. It’s like these roses smell nice. I feel good. That’s what aromatherapy is. That’s all it is. 

Mike Matthews: So when you start getting into the weeds of claims about impacting very specific and significant physiological processes like hormones, for example, hormone production.

Yeah, not so much. 

Kurtis Frank: Definitely not aromatherapy, and I’m sure you can get like some sort of oil that interacts with Steroid synthesis, but at that point you’d have to just orally ingest it and why would you call it an essential oil at that point? Just call it a supplement. That’s what it is at that point If you’re taking something in a pill and putting your mouth, it’s a supplement So yeah, like I just think that the term essential oil has It’s gotten really broad looks at almost anything that like a comes from a plant and B is in lipid form and Tries to package them all up I also remember like I forget where I heard this from but it was a marketing thing Where if you have one brand of in this case It was tomato [00:40:00] sauce if you have like your brand tomato sauce and people could like it But eventually people will go I want to try another tomato sauce. So they’ll go to another brand and you lose profits. But if you then make your regular tomato sauce, homegrown tomato sauce and chunky tomato sauce, they can be the exact same thing. But when people have that natural urge to, I want to try something else, they will stick with your brand.

And that’s what I think is going on here with essential oils. Rather than just focusing on one molecule that you can prove is beneficial, they grab a category. They break about that category collectively. And then, when one of the oils doesn’t work, they say, Oh, of course lemon didn’t work. Bullshit reason.

Have you tried rose? Oh, rose isn’t working either. Thank you for paying for that rose. It’s probably because, bullshit reason. Have you tried rose paired with lavender under the blue moon? And it’s as long as you have multiple things to hop back and forth from, you can keep people in your financial influence.[00:41:00] 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s interesting from a marketing perspective, because then there’s the other on the other side of that coin is line extension, which there are some famous examples of where that has failed, where you had a very established product. And then, the new Coke debacle is by the most.

I’d say cited example of this, but then there was another one. I forget it was with one of these painkiller brands where they had their standard product. They’d been selling for a long time and they thought that it would be a good idea for that exact reason. You just gave to offer an extra strength version of their painkiller.

Oh, 

Kurtis Frank: and it insinuated their main one was weak, isn’t it? That’s 

Mike Matthews: possible. That’s possible. They don’t know exactly. I don’t think, I’ve never seen at least anything that would. Qualify as in depth, I would say, research with scientific rigor as to what exactly happened and why in terms of a, maybe a postmortem, but what did happen period is they lost market share.

And again the reason that I, when I came across thing, I first came across this in the book, the 22 mutual laws of [00:42:00] marketing, where the, I guess the conclusion that was shared in the book, which. Was come to by the company themselves, in, in probably following up with research with customers is basically that psychologically, if you’re going to make a change, like most people, a lot of people that don’t like change, they just, they don’t like change at all in their life’s period.

They like to just do the same things every day, eat the same thing, same brands, watch the same TV shows and pretty much keep everything the same. And they can take little bits of change, but they don’t want that much. So now when they went to go get their favorite. Painkiller, the painkiller they always use, they had two options.

And if they’re going to try the extra strength now, because that felt like a change I guess they might as well. Again, I don’t remember the brand, let’s say it was a leave, right? So if I’m already making a change, maybe I should just try Tylenol, or maybe I should just make Advil or just try Advil.

And in the end, that’s what ended up happening. I, that, that extra strength version of the product just ended up bleeding market share. 

Kurtis Frank: That’s interesting. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Kurtis Frank: I always just figured you can make other options in a sort of parallel thing. If there’s multiple [00:43:00] categories, but if you have one product and then you make another one in the same category, say it’s stronger than that just says, Oh, Hey, take the good one.

That thing we’ve been selling you this entire time. That’s the shitty one. The customer is just going to go, Oh fuck you too. Just buy something else in response. 

Mike Matthews: Possibly that may be a bit more cerebral though. It may be something again, a bit more just primitive of yeah, this feels like a change.

And if I want to make a change, who knows, maybe titles better. But I’m sure that people that are more. Versed in, in marketing and branding in particular could probably explain it better and give some examples of it going both ways. Like you mentioned, I could see that with tomato sauces for sure. If you see your brand has an extra chunky, it doesn’t imply that what you have been using is bad in any way.

It’s just different. So if you want more chunkiness, then you go with the extra chunky versus something that has a qualitative connotation. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. But I honestly think. If you want to address the topic of essential oils, the best, it would probably be [00:44:00] from a marketing standpoint. I honestly think that’s also why you see the same terms like antioxidant, anti inflammatory thrown around so much.

It’s just to make all options seem exactly the same. So you can just, keep on draining people of their money. If something works and they’re just going to keep on buying it, like we could probably stop marketing pulse and people would still buy it just because it works. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. 

Kurtis Frank: It gets so much word of 

Mike Matthews: mouth.

People try it and they’re like yeah, I like this. And that’s pretty much how it works. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. But if you stopped marketing essential oils and didn’t attach any popular claims to it, nobody would buy that stuff, which should speak like a lot based on whether or not it’s a good supplement or not. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I agree with that.

I think that’s a valid point. Anything else in particular you want to cover on essential oils? Anything specific? Obviously That’s an umbrella statement that probably applies to everything. You mentioned a few that may like if you want a little bit of help relaxing, maybe some rose and lavender can help a little bit.

And if you want to, if you want a little bit of [00:45:00] help not falling asleep, maybe some lemon balm. But beyond that, is there anything specifically you wanted to discuss? 

Kurtis Frank: Oh, I should quickly clarify that lemon balm as an oral supplement is a sedative, but the scent of lemon. Is a pro waking like it helps stimulate you a little bit.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure. It’s a good distinction to make because of course we have lemon balm in lunar in the sleep for the supplement that you formulated. So that would be a little bit counterintuitive. 

Kurtis Frank: It would just get you awake, lucid dreaming all the time. But beyond that I would just mention that if you want to dabble in aromatherapy first of all, even if it fails if you don’t actually get any cognitive benefits out of it.

At least you can make your room smell pretty. So it’s not a complete loss. But Yeah, which is worth something. Like you said, if it’s just Hey, this smells nice. Yeah, I would definitely look into an aromatherapy machine, though. I personally dabble in aromatherapy a bit. And I only have two ways of administration.

One is an aromatherapy machine. It’s like It’s just like a little white box in the corner of my room. I just put it in some [00:46:00] oil, press the button, then the sense there for a few hours. And 

Mike Matthews: it’s like a little diffuser, right? Yeah, exactly. It’s some water. I have one in my office too. I don’t even remember what oil I have.

Something just smells good. I’m just like, eh, sometimes I use it. It smells nice. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. And then the other way I do it, I, sometimes I just put some lavender in my mustache. It’s right under my nose. 

Mike Matthews: Sure. 

Kurtis Frank: And it works, but it’s more of a rapid spike that only lasts about 30 minutes. But yeah if you want to dabble in aromatherapy, consider an aromatherapy machine, cause Again, they’re not that expensive or if you do have an expensive one, maybe not buy that one.

You probably get it for 30 bucks. 

Mike Matthews: You shouldn’t spend more than 20 or 30 on a 

Kurtis Frank: diffuser. Yeah. Cause it would be if you truly want to test it out, a diffuser would be the way to go rather than just dropping little bits of oil all around. And I have heard some people say drop a little bit of oil on your pillow before you go to sleep.

If it’s the lavender or rose and like common aura. Please don’t do that, because when [00:47:00] you’re asleep, you’re just going to roll your eyeballs in it. That’s not good. 

Mike Matthews: And then what happens? Then 

Kurtis Frank: your eyeballs get super relaxed, man. And purple, maybe. I don’t know. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. But basically, just, yeah, don’t just put a bunch of oil on your pillow, unless you’re going to wash it the next morning, including your face.

It’s just going to build up and be 

Mike Matthews: it’s going to get, it’s going to get 

Kurtis Frank: gross. It just does not sound good. 

Mike Matthews: Agreed. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. Also there was one case where I heard someone talk about how they tried the lavender thing on the pillow. Then they woke up and half their face broke out of acne. 

Mike Matthews: That’s cute.

Kurtis Frank: Turns out oil affects people differently. And sometimes the allergic reactions happen. 

Mike Matthews: That’s one way to find out. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: But yeah, that’s pretty much all on essential oils. Great. So everybody listening if you like Curtis and if you like what he has to say, which you should, 

Kurtis Frank: you definitely should. 

Mike Matthews: He says so many great things.

Kurtis Frank: I’m so classy 

Mike Matthews: and clever. 

Kurtis Frank: No, 

Mike Matthews: then definitely head over to our blog over at legionathletics. com slash blog, [00:48:00] because he is doing a great job putting up all kinds of great content. Interesting funny stuff and he drops some nice little gems like Harry coin purse and that way that’s in one of his articles.

You have to go find it though. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: that’s good. I like that. 

Kurtis Frank: Even if you don’t like my humor, then at least the information is good. Exactly. At least you try, man. I like it. Yeah. And if you really dislike my humor, then reading my stuff will make you stronger. You’ll learn to tolerate twice as much bullshit as you were before.

Mike Matthews: That’s valuable. 

Kurtis Frank: Yes. It’s win, win. 

Mike Matthews: So yeah, head over to legionathletics. com slash blog and you’ll see in the feed the articles have a, an author attribution. So some of them are by Curtis, some of them are by me, some of them by army who also works with us. I’ll And if you click on Curtis’s name, for example, you will be able to just see everything he has written anything interesting you have in the pipeline, Curtis content wise, 

Kurtis Frank: Content wise, we’re just hitting out some like major supplements to have a lot of search.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Kurtis Frank: One of them that [00:49:00] surprised me was licorice. I did not know so many people looking at licorice as a supplement, but it’s actually really interesting because licorice. It’s not just a candy. It’s one of the, I’d say probably top 15 traditional Chinese medicines. It’s one of the most promiscuous ones.

Cause Chinese medicine does have combination stuff. Like you have Astralis in one hand, and then you have Angelica sinensis in the other, and you could either take them individually or you can put them together. Bam. Dangui Bokzui Tang. And that’s used for treating menopausal symptoms. And it’s basically that you need to use these two herbs in particular together.

And these combination therapies can go up to four to five different herbs and licorice is in a lot of them in part because it may reduce side effects, may increase absorption, or just may have its own benefits. But licorice is also interesting because. It can, I would say after read, when the licorice article comes out, give it a read, keep an open mind.

You may want to [00:50:00] consider licorice supplementation, even though it is proven to increase cholesterol and reduce testosterone. 

Mike Matthews: That’s a cliffhanger. 

Kurtis Frank: Yeah you normally should not ever want to be near that kind of thing. And also you should read it because you could potentially just eat too much of the actual candy and reduce your testosterone, and I tell you, the dose of which you know, don’t eat more licorice than this.

And beyond that, I’m continuing my theme on looking into interesting yet not like partially not fully scientific things like placebo effect, the effect of music meditation is coming out soon. Oh good. So an article on that. Just looking at how Eastern Western medicine interact the philosophies behind a lot of this stuff.

And then if you don’t like that stuff, I always do overviews on the best supplements for any sort of situation. 

Mike Matthews: So it’s all kinds of things to get more woke as the cool kids are saying these days. Oh 

Kurtis Frank: yeah. Oh, 

Mike Matthews: you woke me woke bro. I’m 

Kurtis Frank: so old. I know [00:51:00] I’m not woke. I’m just. I want to go to sleep now because you said that it’s all right.

Mike Matthews: I’m old too. I’m better for it though. My thirties are going to be so much better than my twenties. 

Kurtis Frank: Oh yeah. Mine too, as well. Like I can’t be a researcher for that long. 

Mike Matthews: All right, man. Thanks as always for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Great information. Again, anybody listening head over to legionathletics.

com slash blog, and you can learn all kinds of neat things, stuff like this, and a lot more. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility. And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. [00:52:00] And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at musclefullife. com. and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself, and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my 100 percent natural joint supplement, Fortify. Now, Fortify helps keep your joints healthy, functional, and pain free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss.

And its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and [00:53:00] swelling and to help keep your cartilage healthy, strong, and intact. All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half Star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement and another 90 plus reviews on my website.

Also with a four and a half star average. So if you want healthy, functional and pain free joints that can withstand the demands of your active lifestyle, then you want to head over to www. legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Fortify Today, and just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10 percent on your entire order.

And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don’t have to return the [00:54:00] products. You don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans.

So you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.