A Herbal Dispensary - Your Way

In this episode of Tech Talk with OptimalRx, Kristin and Julianne discuss the ins and outs of owning your own herbal medicine dispensary; from our Naturopathic and Herbalist roots, to the unique nuances of plant medicine offerings and their individualised prescription, herbal medicine dispensaries offer a manner of prescribing that is unique to our profession.  This discussion also covers the main obstacles practitioners may face when choosing to own a dispensary, including cost, how to choose the appropriate herbs for your practice, patient compliance, and storage.  If you have ever thought of developing and owning your own herbal medicine dispensary, this is an ideal podcast for you!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Tech Talk with Optimal RX. My name is Kristen Gilmour. I'm here with Julianne Grant, and we are ready to talk herbal medicine.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Kristen and I are both practicing naturopaths with 25 years experience between us. As big herb nerds, we are excited to explore all things phytotherapy and health with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hello everyone and welcome to Tech Talk. Julianne and I are so happy to be back for 2026, and we are really excited about the education offerings that we're planning to bring to our practitioners this year, which as always includes lots of podcast chats, and we always try to bring a real clinical focus. And so for today's episode, Julianne and I have titled our conversation, A Herbal Dispensary Your Way, because what we wanted to do to kick things off this year is really talk as herbal medicine practitioners about some of the incredible benefits of having a herbal dispensary, really focusing specifically on a liquid herbal dispensary and looking at some of the diverse forms this can take, how dispensaries can look different for different practitioners. We want to discuss different ways of thinking about how you might design your herbal dispensary, as well as talking a little bit about some of the challenges and realities that might come with having a herbal dispensary and ways to overcome some of the hurdles that practitioners might face when setting up their herbal dispensary. So essentially, we're going to try and do a succinct, mini deep dive into all things dispensary related.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

And Kristen, you and I have been talking about this topic for so long and often around the boardroom, the boardroom table, we all talk about that at Optimal RX, how we can have this discussion with practitioners around how we can utilize herbal dispensaries, but how do we build a herbal dispensary? Because we've just noticed from talking with different practitioners, from talking to student practitioners, that building a herbal dispensary can feel really daunting if they haven't already had one or they haven't worked within a clinic that has had one or established one. And I think you and I have just wanted to put the word out of how amazing it is to actually own and work with your own herbal dispensary. And I do understand that this is not available to every single practitioner. You might not be working many days a week, or there might be other issues in terms of storage and what have you that we'll talk about as this podcast goes along, that are things that we can address. And we're hoping today to just sort of touch on those areas where every single practitioner can have a few herbs in their in their clinic space, and that's what today is about. And I mean, you and I love herbs. We're we're a little bit biased, so we could talk about our passion for herbal medicine forever. We just want to make this very relevant to all types of naturopaths and all of us that are working, because at the end of the day, for naturopaths and herbalists, our roots, where we're from historically, is plant medicine, you know, fungal medicine, fungi medicine, plant medicine. This is where our roots are so strongly ingrained for us. And it's one thing we learn through the majority of our years as we're studying to be a naturopath. And in my mind, it really does set us apart in natural medicine world is being able to use and understand plant medicine. And really, they are magic. Plants are magic. We are not talking about one singular ingredient, one singular constituent, one singular nutrient. We are talking about this whole beautiful synergy of constituents and the energy that that plant brings to it, its affinities for body parts, its affinities for tissue parts and personalities, even. And so the use of plant medicine really sets us apart from other types of natural medicine practitioners in what we can offer our patients and what we can offer the people coming to seek our help for so many reasons. And because of this, and I know that you often talk about this as well, Kristen, is we can individualize people's treatments, our patients' treatments, because the plants allow for that. They allow for individual prescribing, and it's a form of compounding, really. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say a little bit about that topic and Kristen and how we can form some individual. What does what does plant medicine allow us to be able to do, do you think, in your words?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I think that was just you you're always speaking all the things that I'm thinking, Julianne. I think that we we do really love plant medicine, and I feel like our listeners probably, if they're listening to this podcast, if they can sit through this amount of herb love, then they're probably very um in touch with with that aspect to practice and to naturopathic practice and herbalism. And I think having having a selection of herbal remedies on hand really does for me evoke that connection that you mentioned with the the history of our profession and reminds me that I'm in this long lineage of practitioners that have been lucky enough uh to be able to cultivate a herbal dispensary or an apothecary if if we wish. And we get this amazing privilege to house and have at the ready these incredible herbal catalysts for healing, which as you've mentioned, Julianne, gives us the ability to provide really individualized bespoke support for our individual patients. You know, our plants have personalities, our patients have personalities, and you know, the the energetics of both and it can really merge beautifully together. And I think one of the benefits of having a herbal dispensary is that because of this uh individuation, it it makes it a really flexible option in your practice. You know, we we get all this flexibility with a herbal dispensary in terms of treatment options, so including, you know, how many herbs you wish to prescribe or combine at one time for a particular patient or complaint. If you need to cover different aspects to treatment, like you mentioned, Julianne, you can kind of broaden uh how you're supporting your patient. You can play around with dosing very easily because it's a liquid. You know, you've got the option of drop dosing, uh, recommended therapeutic dosing, you can do acute dosing. We can also prescribe and combine different types of extracts depending on what the patient requires. We now, you and I, Julianne, utilize uh quite a fair few glycitracs as part of our dispensary, which gives more flexibility and more options within our practice. You've also got different uh, I guess, sized bottles. I don't know if that's the best way to say it, but you know, it means that our herbal medicines will last for different periods of time. We've got different uh treatment timelines that we can work with depending on what we're trying to achieve. And this is made very easy by this compounding nature of a dispensary. We've also got the option of adding other remedies or modalities to our liquid mixes, whether that be something like a flower essence or a homeopathic. I know Julianne, you and myself both do this dip for different occasions for different practitioners, uh, sorry, for different patients, I should say, and that works really beautifully. We also have flexibility when it comes to cost and um you know financing our remedies, both cost when we're thinking about for ourselves in our clinic and also for our patients, and that ties in with treatment plan flexibility as well, and and the types of patients that we're able to see. So there really is just so much benefit to us as naturopathic and herbal practitioners if we can in some way work with our own herbal dispensary. I think another thing that you touched on just before, Julianne, that is another benefit is that you really get to experience the synergy of plant medicine at work. And it's not just by prescribing whole plant extracts where the synergy of the constituents prescribed or that are present in that plant have already been essentially designed to work in harmony. They've been beautifully fashioned in nature to work together, but also by experientially learning how to combine the unique herbs in your dispensary in a way that just so greatly enhances their effects, their benefit. And I think that that art of herbal medicine prescribing, as we often talk about, is one of my favorite things of working with the dispensary.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Well, I totally agree. And, you know, I have my soapbox at the ready about whole plant part versus constituent medicine, and I will touch on that at another time. But that's where our liquid herbs are so magical because we are combining many different medicinal facets, I suppose, in terms of plant chemistry, and that is why they have large affinities for different parts of the body, um, or even smaller, specific affinities for different parts of the body. And herbal dispensaries, I think we can have a look at them now, Kristen, and let's have a chat about what some of those herbal dispensaries might look like. Because I know for me, as a practitioner over the years, many years now, and same with you, that has looked very, very different. You know, I think when I first graduated and I worked in a clinic that I was actually doing remedial massage in first, that had a fairly large dispensary, but it wasn't utilized much. And it was with a different um type of herbal medicine that I wasn't used to using clinically. So I actually didn't use much herbal medicine out of fear of not of doing the wrong thing, I think, in that in my first year as a new grad. And then when I actually went and set up my own little space actually in Broome, Western Australia, which was beautiful, I think I started with around six to eight herbs, you know, and and started playing with those. And they tended to cover those sort of base adaptogenic immune sort of properties that I would kind of generally see, and they had broad, broad therapeutic range, and and that's how I kind of started. And once I played with them and I put a new order in to repeat that herb, I would probably add another one as I went, and it built up over time. But my next stage was when I moved back to Melbourne, I actually ended up purchasing a different clinics dispensary, and this went from me having maybe 20 herbs or something like that, 24 herbs to having, gosh, you worked, Kristen, at the same dispensary with me after a little while, probably close to 100 herbs, I would say. Um, there was a very busy dispensary, and that was actually a little bit overwhelming at times and not quite sure how to utilize all those herbs. But you can, you know, the the varying degree. I soon definitely worked out those herbs that myself I prescribed more of than not. And obviously, as you were working with me, Kristen, we both worked that out over time. Um, but the the change is so gradual, but then you can also take a leap, is what I'm trying to say. Like that's pretty much what happened to me. I had this beautiful slow build-up, I got to experience those small amounts of herbs. I took them myself, obviously, and then I jumped into this other bigger space, which allowed me to broaden my use and my knowledge of liquid herbs too, which is where I think hands-on use of these herbs allows you to do that. So if we were looking at clinics now, what I am utilizing now, Kristen, you and I once again share a dispensary, and that has very much been curated around what we see is in our patients. But it's taken a long time to build up to that. So, what's your experience with your dispensaries over time?

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, I really like that you mentioned those different types of dispensaries that you've worked with, and I think something that you said that is really important is that when you did purchase a pre-owned dispensary, someone else had designed that for their purposes, and so you had to come in and sort of familiarize yourself with that dispensary and work within that. And I think that can be really overwhelming, but it does give you a lot of breadth and uh versatility and the ability to play with a lot of different things that you might not normally play with. So it was a really positive experience, I know for you. But I I think when we think about designing a dispensary, so say you're starting from scratch and you're designing a dispensary, I think there's probably two main ways to look at it, or general, I guess, uh, directions you could think about uh going in. And and by that I mean how do we choose the main herbs that are going to make up our dispensary? How do we build that dispensary? And one way to do it uh that is quite popular with a lot of practitioners that have a special interest or a particular focus in clinic is to go specific, to choose herbs based on a specialization of the type of patient that you plan to see in clinic. And, you know, for example, some common health areas that practitioners often focus on would include, say, fertility, and then you could choose from a range of herbs that you know would be beneficial to support those particular patients. Uh, female or male reproductive health is another common one, gut health, infectious conditions, skin health, you know, cardiovascular health, kidney health, oncology, all of these sort of different areas might be areas of specialty or special interest or a focus for practitioners where they can build their dispensary around herbs that they know are going to service this particular cohort. So that's one way to approach designing your dispensary, but it's usually only applicable if you know the type of patients that you'd like to see.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I do, I agree with you, Kristen, and I think that might also be even more applicable for practitioners that have worked in a larger clinic and they might have already used their herbal medicine dispensary and they're moving into their own niche and into their own space where they've had some really good experiences with specific herbal medicines, and so they understand how to really hone in on their type of patient that they're seeing. So, yeah, the specificity can be great. Sometimes you can come out of college understanding exactly what that is, but often you don't. And so having those few years of um experience under your belt and then being able to specify which herbal medicines you actually know you're going to utilize is a great thing because as you mentioned before, with that larger clinic um dispensary that I I purchased and I inherited, um, there was a lot of waste. You know, that we all we all make mistakes. There was a lot of waste with that, which was was heartbreaking because they're herbs I don't utilise. So, you know, I think it's a great thing if you come from a larger working space and you're going into your own niche, you've had some clinical um experience there with what types of herbs you'd like to use.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Definitely, and I think that's a really good point. And there are probably, I might say, like some sort of not exceptions, but like different ways of having a specifically uh tailored dispensary. I know that for myself, I have designed a dispensary this way, sort of before, even though I'm not I've never sort of positioned myself as a specialist in one particular area. But when I first graduated from college, I had um two different clinics that I worked in. And so one of the places that I worked part-time was uh in rural Victoria with residents of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation retreat or centre. And I really took a sort of proactive and specialized approach to my dispensary, and by what I mean by that is that I chose the herbs ahead of time. I had to transport them, and I based that on the patient population I knew I was going to be supporting, so I took into consideration well, I don't want to bring a lot of herbs because it is a big undertaking to transport them, you know, on this long drive. I also knew that the herbs that I was bringing, the liquid herbs, had to be alcohol-free for this particular cohort of patients, which limited my choices. And although I didn't know exactly which conditions or complaints, like health complaints, I'd be treating, I did know, or I did think it would be useful to sort of think ahead and think about which herbs are broadly acting that could tick a lot of boxes, but would also be really effective for what was going to likely be some of the common areas of health or body systems that would need herbal support in this patient population. So for this cohort, it was a lot of nervous system support herbs that I focused on. So that's one example where it's not necessarily a particular condition that I was treating, but it was a particular patient population that helped determine and narrow down my herbal choices. And so that is that is one way that if you have some inkling of the patient population or the type of conditions that you want to see or that you're going to see, that can really help build your dispensary. But the other approach to designing a dispensary is a more generalized approach. And this is where, as we've sort of touched on already, Julianne, we're choosing herbs based on which we believe have the broadest reach and can tick the most boxes, as we say. And it ensures that we have herbs that cover sort of the most general health complaints that you might encounter or have the most common actions that you want to elicit in your patient. So within these broad reach, more generalized herbs, you may also consider, like you mentioned, Julianne, herbs based on familiarity. So how well do you know them? Have you prescribed them before? Uh, do you have a particular affinity with any herbs? You can choose herbs as I've done many times based on excitement, really. It's it's when you read about a herb or you hear about a herb or another practitioner discusses how they've utilized a herb and it really resonates with you, and you can't wait to trial that particular herb. And of course, the paradigm within which we as a herbalist might work in will determine which herbs maybe we resonate more with, whether that be, you know, a traditional Chinese medicine paradigm, an Ayurvedic paradigm, a traditional Western herbal paradigm. You might have an affinity with herbs that are native to Australia or New Zealand, you know, so that is something that can play into the choice around the herbs that you're procuring for your dispensary. And currently, as you mentioned, Julianne, I do have quite a large generalist, I guess you would call it, dispensary, which has a lot of herbs for myself to choose from, but also for the other practitioners that utilize this dispensary, including yourself, Julianne. But as you mentioned, I started with a much smaller number and I chose herbs that I loved that I thought would be the most versatile, particularly looking at herbs from the classes like adaptogens, immunomodulators, inflammation modulators, digestive and elimination support herbs. So they're the kind of particular herbs that that you know can be beneficial across so many different types of patients.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Absolutely. And just to add on to that broad view, if you don't know where to start, I think if we can look at our modern times, if you really want to play with some herbs and you want to start providing your own herbal dispensary to your patients, I would start with adaptogens and nervenes. Like even that, if you weren't sure about compliance due to taste, I think our nervenes and our adaptogens are probably the most uh easiest or most compliant. Our patients tend to be with those, but everybody needs them. And you can give them in small doses, you can start small, however you like. You can support sleep with nerven. So I think maybe thinking about those broader categories, but even once again, bringing that back in a little bit, well, what does generally everybody need? How can I introduce herbal medicine to my patients in a fairly um easy way for them to adopt them and go and love them? Because I also think with adaptogenic support and so stress support and nervous system support, you feel that fairly quickly as you take them. So it's a really positive kind of way to feedback from that experience with your patients as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

I think even uh you're reminding me of when I first graduated. So the other clinic that I worked within, I very, very slowly built up. A small herbal dispensary because I had no capital. First graduating, no capital to work with, and I really did it in a little bit of a I guess retrospective way. So I would see a patient, um, think about their treatment plan, how I wanted to support them, and if I wanted to do some herbal support, then basically I had to order those herbs in and work with those herbs. But what I did was had a very conservative approach. So I basically I remember I had a patient where I wanted to give her some bladder tonic herbs, and I remember really looking into the herbs that I wanted to prescribe and thinking, okay, I want to prescribe them for this patient, but after I prescribe them, they're going to be on my shelf, and I want to be able to utilize them. So it was almost like they were very specific and for that particular mix, but I also tried to get to know those herbs so well that I knew that when another patient came in, I would know whether or not that herb was appropriate, and gradually from that built up a nice high turnover small dispensary that did have quite a few adaptogens in there. So that was really, really useful for me because I could very easily track patient feedback as well and work on my herbal medicine craft of prescribing. I think that really gave me a lot of confidence in prescribing liquid herbs.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, it's it's a wonderful thing to start small and build. And you're absolutely right. When particularly if you're starting with a dispensary, you tend not to have the capital from the dispensary to put back into itself, unless you've got means in your other mechanisms of business or something like that. So yeah, it can start start as small as you like to as big as you like, as much as you can. But it might be good now, Kristen, to talk a little bit about some of those hurdles that practitioners feel they need to overcome to be able to confidently start on their herbal dispensary journey. And I think one of the biggest ones is cost. And we've had this feedback from our from reps on the road and stuff like that too, because you know, herbal medicine isn't cheap to purchase and to set up. Um, but there is a varied range price bracket for each one, too. And I think the other hurdle to that to cost is ensuring that we're charging enough for what those herbal medicines are worth too. So, Kristen, because you are literally running the herbal dispensary that I'm using at the moment, do you want to speak a little bit to how you have balanced out costs and how you think that hurdle can be overcome?

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, I think that it is definitely a hurdle. And one thing that is something to consider for practitioners who are first branching out into starting, you know, building their dispensary from scratch is that there are great deals and discounts available for a first dispensary. So we can talk a little bit more about that later. But something that I found really helpful with as my dispensary has grown and grown is a simple Excel spreadsheet. And I say simple, but I'm not too Excel savvy. So I actually enlisted a friend to create this for me, and I call it my Herbal Mix Calculator. And basically, what it is is it has all the herbs in there from the different companies that I use, and I input each herb into a mix by percentage, it adds the cost of the bottle, GST, markup, all that kind of stuff. And by having a spreadsheet like this, I'm able to keep very, very easily keep track of how much things are costing, but also be really cognizant of herbal, like the different herbs and and I guess what they cost individually as well. And there are lots of different ways to cost herbs. I know lots of practitioners do it differently, but I found for me this mixed calculator has been a huge time saver and actual money saver because I'm able to, you know, knowledge is sort of power in this sense where when you know what things are costing you and you know, you know what's available. I think something that can be considered when we think about cost too, and this can be something that is part of the decision-making process of as you're building your dispensary, is herbs that are very, very sustainable, that aren't as um, I guess, high yield as some of the herbs that are more at risk of becoming endangered that we have to cultivate, um, they are often on the lower price bracket, these really, really endemic sustainable herbs, they're often a little bit cheaper. So that is something to consider. Um, and sustainability can play a really great role in your practice of herbal medicine, not just in cost ways, but also in terms of keeping the profession really sustainable ongoing as well. So that is one way that that I find is really helpful and being mindful of patients' finances too when you are prescribing your liquids. I know that you know that that sort of ties back into the flexibility that we were talking about earlier with you don't necessarily have to start someone off on a big 500mm bottle. You can start them on a smaller bottle, you can start them on a lower dose, you can gradually increase things over time as they start to see results.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Kristen, I love that you're using an Excel spreadsheet. And obviously, I know you have because we were discussing this when you first um asked your beautiful friend to develop it for you, and it has been a game changer, hasn't it? Because you can keep track of what's going into herbal medicines, the percentages of, the cost of. Um, on your just out of interest, actually, because I don't think I've ever asked you this question about your spreadsheet. Does it help keep a track of levels of herbal medicines into two bottles? Yeah. Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

And you can it can be as complex or as simple as you're able to make it. I'm sure there are people that are much more uh across Excel or other programs that they could use that would do this for them. Uh, but it does help with stock levels and it helps with being aware of what are my really high turnover herbs, those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah, it's a it's a great thing to invest into, I think. And the other issue is space and storage of herbal medicines. You know, um traditionally I've kept them in the room that I have been using in a clinic, but granted, that room and that space was mine for the week, so I wasn't necessarily sharing that space. Or if I was sharing that space, I was using it with a practitioner that was also using those herbal medicines. So that that was one way to go around storing that dispensary and generally in a temperature control here in Victoria, it's generally temperature controlled, you know, it's nothing too worried about. But heat can be something that people like in Far North and over West can get concerned about. I think we've generally said is that around the 30-degree mark is safe. Anything under that 30-degree mark is an okay environment to store your herbs in. Anything above that on a regular basis, not the one-off basis, but on the regular basis, then you might be looking to storing that into some cooler climates. Um, other other problems with space that people might come about is if whether they're traveling to different places, whether they're seeing clients at their home or or elsewhere in other clinics and they might need to take a dispensary with them. Or like yourself, if we're working remotely, we're not actually seeing patients face to face. So, how does space work for you, Kristen? What have you got to say on that matter?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Well, yeah, definitely space can be an issue. And I think as more and more people, practitioners specifically worked from home and worked remotely post-COVID or during COVID, we had to find more and more places to house our amazing herbs. For me, my herbs are in my office and I've built a I actually, you know, I started with just some IKEA shelving and sort of built it up over time. But I know, like if you if you want to house a modest to smaller size dispensary uh within your home, I know some practitioner friends who have their dispensary in their pantry or you know on their bookshelf. There's there's sort of lots of different ways that you can incorporate your dispensary into your living space or working space, but it's also it it can be it can be challenging if you want to have a really big dispensary. So I think for when it gets quite large, there needs to be a bit of a purpose-built kind of space, but you also always have the opportunity and the option to use another practitioner's dispensary as well, and even with my dispensary that I know other practitioners utilize and will send me scripts and I'll make herbs up for their patients. There was a point in time as I was growing this dispensary where I didn't have everything that I needed, and I sometimes had to utilize the local health food store that had naturopaths and dispensary in the back, and had to send scripts there and get patients to pick it up from there. So there are, I guess, external dispensaries that you can use if you are a bit space poor. I know with traveling there are practitioners that have lots of ingenious ways of storing their herbs as they travel. But for myself, when I was traveling to the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, I had to keep my uh herbal medicines in a cooler sort of bag situation, make sure that they weren't left anywhere for extended periods of time where it could get too hot. And you have to think about what you're transporting them in and all that kind of thing as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Fabulous. And there are, like you said, there are many options. We're so blessed these days that there are many options to be able to utilize herbal medicine and start playing with them. And if that means that there's a dispensary that you can utilize that's not your own, but will take some scripts and you can start experiencing your patients having herbs before you actually can get your own dispensary. I think that's a really great way. The other one is how to choose, other hurdle, I should say, is how to choose the herbs that you want in your dispensary. Now we've spoken a great deal about that already, really, but one thing I want to add to that actually is that we've developed at Optimal RX some really great handbooks. So they're one of the medicinal mushrooms handbook and one on our unique photomedicine handbook. And they're they really do compare and contrast all of the medicinal mushrooms we have and all of our unique herbal medicines that we have. So you're able to kind of get a feel for those herbs before you even buy them. So reach out to Optimal Rx or to your rep and have a chat about that. But we also have so many other resources online that are free as well, such as our tech sheets and you know, other sorts of um from the desk materials that you might be able to look into and see what the topic is about and whether that herb will then suit you and suit your dispensary. I think that's another way we can offer helping. Um, and also reach out to your rep, you know, reach out to Optimal RX, reach out to your reps and see if they can sit down and have a discussion with you because they'd love to around how to choose your own herbal medicine dispensary. So I think the final thing we want to chat about with regards to hurdles is actual patient compliance with their herbal medicines. And I, you know what, honestly, I think we make this a bigger deal than what it actually is. I mean, we're giving our our patients bitters, for goodness sake, and and they learn to love their bitters. And I think this is the magic of herbal medicine is that patients feel the impact, the beautiful impact that they have on their system, that it they just will take the herbal medicines. But I understand that we can do a lot more to support compliance, and that's what I want to sort of talk about now with you, Kristen. I mean, one of the ways, one of the simplest ways is to add something that tastes good to the mix. So obviously, something like a licorice, which is such a beautiful synergist anyway, it's so low dosing that can be super supportive. We have other lovely digestives that taste beautiful as well, like cinnamon. You know, there's so many um ways we can support the taste of a herbal medicine, or you can use one of those herbal medicines as a glissey tract. They don't all have to be hydroethanolic, you can use one of them as a glissy track. So a herb that you might use a lot of in your clinic, you could see if we have that as a glissy track and use that in that way. And that sweetens the mix beautifully for most patients. And then it's also talking to your patients about how they can take the herbal medicine. So, you know, for kids, they might be putting them in healthy little jelly shots or or bits of juice or grape juice or something that is strong and masks the taste of it. Um there's many ways that we can talk to patients about doing and improving their compliance. Kristen, do you have any tips on compliance with your patients?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

I really agree with you here, Julianne. I think that once you it's almost like a hurdle that is more in your head until you start to prescribe the herbs. And I think one of the biggest things for me with my patients is taking the time to educate the patients about why they're taking the herbal mix and also demonstrate to my patients about how to take their herbal mix. I found that really helpful with my patients, and I know some practitioners uh even provide like a handout that they um with the herbs that they're prescribing, and that would explain how best to take them. And I know before I took my practice online, I used to ask patients if they hadn't had herbal medicines before, to take their first dose with me in the clinic so that we could go through it together, um, they could experience their mix with me there, and if there were any questions or anything came up, we could deal with it on the spot. So that's something that I found really helpful. I think you know, some people do prefer the ease of taking a pill compared to a liquid extract, but and and there's a there's a time and a place for that, like that that can be, there's been times in my life where I just can't take a herbal mix because I'm traveling too much or whatever it is. But when you explain to patients about not just that that bespoke nature of their mix, tailoring it to their specific situation and their specific needs, but also explaining how we're able to get such a more potent uh dose with our liquid extracts does help in terms of compliance. And like you said, the taste aspect can be a bit of an initial hurdle, but we've spoken about this on other podcasts as well. We do frequently observe that people quickly become accustomed to their mix and some grow to like the taste of their mix, and even if they don't, they certainly grow to love their medicine. Whether or not they like the taste, they love taking it because they're experiencing the results of taking it. And of course, the I guess the flavor aspect to our hydroethanolic herbal extracts can be minimised, that effect can be minimized by reducing the amount of contact time that the herb mix actually has in the mouth. And so we can do this by diluting the dose just a little bit with a small amount of water. We give out our herbal liquids with a little measuring cup that's 30 mils. Uh, so if we put the dose of the herbal medicine in there, add a little bit of water to dilute it, get them, get the patient to shot that, to drink it quite quickly, and then follow that up with a glass of water or another liquid. That's really I found the best way to take the herbs. And and that's why I think it's been so useful for me to talk a patient through that and demonstrate that with them so that they don't get the shock of you know, that bite of the ethanolic extract uh and sort of freak out about the taste. So that is one thing that I found really helps with compliance. But like you said, Julianne, it doesn't take long usually for patients to really um get on board, get on board with uh the herbal medicines. And just um to pivot a little bit, I was just thinking before we did this podcast about what we're talking about and about the word dispensary. And it really sort of tickled my imagination because we know the word dispensary has Latin roots and and it essentially and basically means dispensing or distributing or administering, you know, something, a medicine or whatever it is. But the word also really reflects the concept of attentive stewardship where we're really looking after our herbal medicines and sort of cultivating this dispensary where we carefully select, combine, and prescribe and administer these herbal medicines to a patient. And I just think it's such a lovely way for me to think about my dispensary as this like cultivated herbal apothecary that we're taking care of and we're supporting our particular community with, you know, our our herbal dispensaries are really our herbal medicine toolkits, you know, we talk about that all the time, where we're able to browse and select the appropriate tool or combination of tools for a specific need. And you know, this can take a lot of different forms. But I thought that was just a really lovely way to think about us as being stewards of these herbs in our dispensary.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

I love that because again, that brings us back to our roots, our roots of becoming herbalists and naturopaths. You know, we care for the planet, we care for the plants, and we care for how they're utilized, and we care for the patients that come and see us. And we can do that so beautifully and well-rounded with plant medicine. Um, this was a really fun podcast to do, Kristen, it really made us think about, you know, how we can narrow down ideas for people and practitioners to start thinking about developing their own herbal medicine dispensaries if they haven't already, or if they're pivoting into their own practice and wanting to rebuild a herbal medicine dispensary. We've also got a couple of podcasts coming up in the next couple of months where we're talking, sorry, talking to some amazing practitioners that have wonderful herbal medicine dispensaries, and their journeys to get there are fabulous. And I am so inspired by talking to these women, actually, these naturopaths and herbalists, and it will be wonderful to have them on in the next couple of months. And the other thing I wanted to finish up with, too, for our practitioners out there, that Optimal RX has a fabulous uh new dispensary offer or first dispensary offer, and that's generally available to new graduates, new naturopathic graduates, or those that are first opening up their very first herbal dispensary. And it's a great offer. It's how a lot of us got started. I didn't, I didn't, I missed the boat. I should have by looking back. But it is a great way to really start planning that herbal medicine, and it's the best financial way to be able to do that too. So if you have any questions, please feel free to contact the girls in the office and they would be more than happy to talk to you about it or contact your Optimal RX rep and they will have a chat with you about it. But Kristen, what a fun podcast. We're super passionate about our herbs, and I hope that that sort of helped practitioners who are on the borderline of thinking do I use herbs? Do I not use liquid herbs? Where do I go with that? Hopefully, we've provided some clarity into yes, you should start, start slow, start small, however you like, use external dispensaries, um, but just get started and really embrace the herbal medicine, plant medicine roots that we've been born into. Thanks, Kristen. That was fun.