 Welcome to Lillian's Beacon World, coming to you live from gorgeous downtown Honolulu. I'm part of the ThinkTech Kauai team, your host, Lillian Cuny. And today we're talking about Maui Majesty and Healing with Plans. I'm so excited to welcome my guest all the way from Maui, the very awesome owner and founder of Maui Majesty, licensed clinical and social worker and PhD, Dr. Janine Holstein. Welcome to the show, Doctor. Hi, thank you so much for having me. The pleasure is all mine. I do honestly appreciate you taking out the time to come and chat with us today. Thank you so much. So I have only been to Maui once since I arrived in Hawaii about 20 months ago. Gorgeous place. How's it going with all, with the new COVID and the new reality that we have? Yeah, so I think, you know, it's really interesting. Definitely businesses are impacted. Things are closed. Tourism has basically shut down. So there's a lot of difficulty, a lot of unemployment. But on the other side, there's also a lot of quiet and calm and kind of going in. So for me, who is a really big introvert, the emotional side of things I'm enjoying, you know, being a farmer and living on my property here, really working on the land is hasn't changed super drastically. But Maui overall, you know, there's definitely a sense of local community helping each other, which has is really a beautiful thing that's come out of this and, you know, not to minimize all of the difficulty that people are experiencing. But there there are some, I call them pandemic perks. That's a great way of putting it. I couldn't agree more, honestly, going through this in a place like Hawaii is truly a blessing. And as you just pointed out, one of the pandemic perks, but certainly not to take away from the challenge challenging times that we're in. Dr. Janine, again, welcome to the show. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about Maui Majesty Majesty? Sure. So yeah, hi, I'm Dr. Janine Holstein. I am a farmer, master gardener. And I also my professional background includes being a therapist and a professor at several universities online. I do have a I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I have a PhD in clinical psychology. So you know, my whole life has or my whole adult life before that too has really been about helping people and connections with people and and growing with people. And I feel like the so I created Maui Majesty. We just incorporated in 2019. We're really brand new to the scene. It feels like kind of for me, it was maybe the missing piece that the physical part, the food part, the plant part for me was something I've been interested in since I can remember really seriously. But most of my professional life went towards emotional, psychological, social healing. So I'm so happy that now in my late 40s, I'm able to join these things together. And, you know, some of this some of the farming and the plants that we cultivate here, you know, I have clients that take our products. And, you know, it's so nice to have people say, oh, wow, you know, all that anxiety that I've been feeling, it's so much better now because of the plant I'm taking. And in conjunction with therapy, it's like a dream. But also I feel like I would be so happy if all my farm put my therapy practice out of work. That would be wonderful. That's so incredible. I was just thinking as you were talking, Doctor, how awesome it would be to quarantine with someone like you. OK, I don't know. You can ask I have a woofer here who she finished working a few weeks ago. I'm not sure she would agree. Well, Doctor Janine, please tell us about what it is you do today. I have titled the show, Maui Majesty Healing with Plants, medicinal plants versus conventional medicine. We're not going to talk too much about conventional medicine. But I do want to hear everything about your, you know, your outtake on the plant based, plant based medicinal properties that can be found in in so many products. First of all, let's take a look at the first photo. I do want any of the viewers, if they would like to be, you know, want to get in contact with you, definitely reach out. So tell us how we can contact you for further details. Yeah, the best way is just to log into my website or check out my website. It's www.mauimagesty.com. We also have an email, which is infoatmauimagesty.com and our phone number, which is not a cell phone. It is a landline, so we don't get text messages as 808-793-3478. But the website is the best. It shows you everything that we're doing and everything that we sell and everything that we make. So that's probably the best way to get a big overview of what's going on here. Wonderful. So tell us all about it. What are you selling? What are you making? What are you doing clinical trials on at the moment? I hear there's a lot going on with you, doctor. So what's going on in your world? Yes, there's definitely a lot going on. Thank you. So OK, just a little bit of background. Most of what I'm doing now really is based on my own personal experiences and experiences that I've of my family, of close friends, of clients, of people in my life. And so friends, it doesn't have to be close, close friends, but people that I know. So anything that I say, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a physician, I'm not a naturopathic doctor. So this is not my area of expertise from a professional standpoint. This is coming from my experience. And however, saying that, so there's no like I don't have FDA inspectors here, like I'm, you know, and anyone who uses any of our things, obviously, at your own risk and understand that these things are not FDA approved and they're not, you know, meant to treat cure, whatever the statement is for FDA, you know, that you're yes, yeah. So if you understand the disclaimer, yeah. Yes, so as a quick disclaimer, yes, any of the information that we're sharing on the show is not to be taken as medical advice in any way. So always, always do seek professional medical advice when you're adding anything to your diet or taking anything as medication. So yes, please continue, Janine. I'm perfect. Please, please go on. I'm fascinated into what you're doing. OK, so, you know, I have I have experienced and I have seen really profound healing with plants. And from, you know, my dog to my child to my father to my to significant other to friends to clients, like all of that. So and in my experience, most of the time, not all of the time, but most of the time, the closer to raw and fresh that a person is consuming a plant to to have an effect on some ailment, the more potent it is, the faster it works and the more dramatically it works and the safer it is as compared to Western medicine. Again, this is not all the time. This has just been my experience a lot of the time. And so I actually come from a family of doctors. My father's a neurologist. My grandfather was a doctor. My son's father is a doctor, you know. So I really come from I was raised in in a medical world, a very highly academic world. And so, you know, that gave me kind of a foundation on which to grow. And, you know, there's definitely a place for conventional Western medicine, absolutely. But when we're talking about like prevention or, you know, dealing with maybe something that doesn't require surgery, I think a lot of the time, plants have so much to offer that we just don't know that much about. Or we overlook or we think it's, you know, maybe we don't take it as seriously because it's like just a green leaf that we pass by every day that we drive by as a weed, you know. So basically, our farm is a little over 24 acres. And the majority of what's here I've left and I've researched. And I really want to be sustainable. I want to work with what's here. I want to work with nature and not necessarily like bulldoze it all down and start from scratch because it turns out that most of the plants that have already been growing here for years and years and are just growing wild and are successful, they're successful for a reason. What we call weeds, if you look up the word weed in the dictionary, it's it's going to be, I don't remember the exact definition, but it's something like a plant that you don't want. So it's really something completely subjective. There's no real objective definition of what a weed is. Usually they're hard to kill, but think about it. Why are they so hard to kill? Maybe they're they're so successful for a reason. Maybe they have compounds in them and enzymes and nutrients that help them survive and thrive. Maybe those can help us survive and thrive, too. Right. So that's kind of such. Yes, that's why I'm opening. Actually, that is such a something I've never thought about. Are you incorporating any weeds into any of your products? Oh, my God. Yes. I mean, I feel like that's the basis of our products. So like one, for instance, Spanish needles, until I knew what they were, they're so annoying. They're like these little their seeds are like these little spiky things that get stuck to your clothes. Every time you walk by, they would always get stuck on my dog. It was like, you know, for me to brush them out, he didn't like it. It was such a pain in the butt. But then after actually because of COVID, I researched it and found that it has lung healing. It has expectorant properties. It has so much healing property that potentially could be, you know, I don't want to say it can cure COVID because I don't know that it can, but it definitely can help with upper respiratory issues. And so, of course, the first thing I did was go out and foraging that. I'm drying it. I'm curing it. I'm grinding it. I'm infusing it into oil. I'm turning it into a lotion. I'm turning it into a tincture. I'm just making it a tea. I mean, we had we were drinking Spanish needle tea for like two weeks. When COVID first started. OK, so you're talking about using these products internally and topically? Absolutely. Wow. Absolutely. So inside and out. Absolutely. Yeah, we do lotions and and massage and body oils with all of our products, all basically all the plants that we have here, we're going to do drops for under the tongue for people who can handle a lot of them are bitter. They don't really taste good. So for people who can handle that, that would be the best way to ingest it, because when it goes under the tongue, it goes more into the bloodstream faster. And also your saliva is breaking it down first. And there's enzymes that it releases because of that. But for people that don't want to put it in their mouth because it tastes bad because it does, especially like kids, you know, I do capsules. So you could just swallow it and there you go. You just, you know, you can eat a little bit of the plant every day. And then, yes, lotions, oils, teas are probably my favorite, because I can make iced tea out of that. And we're just drinking that as part of our normal and add some honey and some lemon and it tastes great. And the other main thing we do is spices so like you could spice your food with it. So, yeah, we have tons of weeds. People would call them weeds that we're using here. Kiabe is probably the biggest one, you know, the mesquite tree. People are just like, that's so invasive. It's thorny. Everybody hates it. I feel like they like it for wood. Sometimes they'll use the pods for flour, you know, it's hind protein. It's a legume and it's also sweet. If you get the sweet ones, if some of them taste better, but you have to sometimes usually if you can wait for it to ripen enough, it'll get sweet. And the sweetener, the sweetening agent in the bean pod actually does have glycemic balancing properties. So it there are compounds in it that the compounds do treat diabetes. Yeah, I was going to say that's right. How wonderful, Doctor. I do have to ask you just for a second to hold that thought. We will come back after a very quick break and talk more with Dr. Janine Holstein. Stay tuned and see you after the break. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone, again to Lillian's Vegan World. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick, and my awesome guest today is from Maui, Dr. Janine Holstein. Welcome back again, Doctor. Thank you so much. I am actually getting really, really awesome vibes from you. Thank you. Have you have people told you that before you've got a really nice energy about you that I'm just honestly genuinely loving. So it's so great. So great to have you on the show and so great to get a chance to talk to you like this. There's so much so many things I want to ask you in such a short time. But I would love for you to continue telling us more about your products. These products I am really, really interested in learning more about. So are you selling any of them on your website? Yeah, we sell all of them. So like so like I was saying, Kiabe is a big one. Actually, right now it's the one that I'm kind of putting a lot into. You asked about clinical trials earlier. I I've just started the process to create a I wouldn't call it an official clinical trial, but maybe market research, but a group because it's it's people I know. It's not a random sample. It's not a double blind study. I will do it anonymously. And the sample is only going to probably be about 15 people. But it's a start and there'll be a pre and post test. I do teach statistics from undergrad up through doctorate. So I do know how to conduct a legit scientific study. But I can tell you that what I'm about to do is not that. But it's a beginning. It's somewhere to start, you know, it's a let's get a small baseline to see if we should if we should go down that road. And so I'm doing that with both Kiabe as well as hemp. We do have the state license through the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to grow up to 20 acres of hemp here. Currently, I'm probably growing closer to two. But that's so that we have a high CBG strain of hemp right now that we're growing. And so I wanted to do clinical trials or research studies with the CBG hemp as well as the Kiabe, because I'm I in my research with Kiabe, there's so many medicinal compounds in it, including things that treat Alzheimer's and cancer. I mean, really hard hitting stuff. And so, you know, I don't again, I'm not going to say this is to replace any medicine in any way, but it can't hurt to ingest some leaves. So, you know, and obviously I would never do anything that could have any potential of harm. And I always there's informed consent and there's, you know, people can drop out at any time and blah, blah, blah. If there's an issue, see your doctor always check with your doctor first, all of that. But, you know, I'm interested to see if there's any impact on taking Kiabe, taking CBG, if it will help, you know, folks with whatever they're struggling with, because there are so many ailments that the both of these compound, both of these plants have compounds to treat. And so it's hard to say like, oh, this treats X or that treats one thing. The article through the NIH, the National Institute of Health that talks about all the pharmacological compounds that Kiabe has or the genus, I'm sorry, it's the Prosopis tree has, it's something like 45 compounds that treat like 20 different illnesses. So, you know, it's let's see what happens. But you asked about my product. So yes, we do sell all of these basically whatever I find on this property that has medicinal value that is not harmful. We turn into a product. And so whether, like I said earlier, I think topical oils and lotions, ingesting drops under the tongue, capsules, teas, spices, those are the main ones that we are selling. That's awesome. You know, doctor, I love what you're talking I love what you said about prevention. I think nowadays what's happened is people get themselves sick. Don't think, you know, don't think so much about their diet. Get sick, take medicine or drugs to try and fix that. When in fact, what we should be doing is concentrating on prevention in the first place. I think that's why in my career working with plant based and, you know, promoting the vegan lifestyle, it's very clear that vegans or people who are on a plant based diet suffer less and, you know, have less ailments. So these medicinal plants that you're working with are just fantastic. I urge anyone watching the show to jump on, you know, jump online, take a look at your page. Can I ask, is there anyone else doing what you're doing here that you know of? I mean, I know of folks that are similar. Can I mention their names or should I not? I was just wondering, because I must say I haven't heard. I've been looking for someone like you, actually, who could explain all of this in layman's terms, because it is quite, you know, quite complicated. And for people like myself who are not familiar with some of these plants that you're talking about, it's very interesting. Doctor, I do want to ask you about synchona, the plant basis for hydroxychloroquine. Can you tell us a bit about that? You said that you're testing some stuff out at the moment, or? Yeah, well, so... First of all, tell us what it is. Sure. Okay. So synchona, it's spelled with a C, C-I-N-C-H-O-N-A. Synchona is a tree that contains a very high amount of quinine, and quinine, you can find in the grocery store in tonic water in very small doses, and they actually lowered the doses in more recent years. But so synchona, okay, let me back up. So since COVID-19 started, I've, you know, I had friends that were affected by this and very, very early on, so I took it very seriously, very quickly, and, you know, considering what we're doing here, I really wanted to see if there is a plant basis for whatever drugs they kept, the news kept coming out with articles or news reports saying, oh, this can help, this has promise with COVID. It may or may not actually be effective, but this, they're doing a study on this because they're seeing some potential. So I would go and research, is there a plant basis for that drug? And if there was, what is it? Can I get it? Can I grow it? What can I do? And so synchona was one that I found early because hydroxychloroquine was one of the earlier drugs that they came out that showed promise. Obviously, there's controversy around it, but, you know, in learning about what synchona was, so I did purchase seeds. We are just starting to grow it. However, it takes years for that to develop into something I could harvest and use. So I also purchased some organic synchona bark, like just the herb, and I have turned that into a synchona oil that's an infused oil. And so it has some quinine in it. It will have more than you'll get at the grocery store in tonic water, but it won't be like so concentrated because, warning, quinine or synchona in high, high doses is toxic. So that's something you wanna take. If you are gonna try it, very low doses, just really be really careful with that one, but it absolutely is, you know, it shows promise. So it's, again, if it can't hurt, if you're doing it responsibly, it can't, you know, there's no harm in trying. And so anytime like, basically I was my own guinea pig with that one because there weren't enough cases on Maui, I asked, I have a number of friends that are doctors and I really, I reached out to every single one of them and I'm like, can I get my hands on any of these COVID positive patients? I wanna test my stuff on them and it was just too complicated. So, and there just weren't enough cases. But, so basically anytime I thought that I was exposed or my son was exposed, we would just take a little bit before bed just in case, you know, and no harm done. I mean, as far as I know, it had no ill effects. Interesting. Doctor, when you talk about the oils, how are you taking the oils? Are they topical or? Okay, so what I was just referring to, I was taking them under my tongue. I would do just two to three drops, maybe once or twice a day and that's it. That's plenty, excuse me. And we do also have topical oils and I've experienced with, not with Sincona but with other plants, I have healed some skin ailments with doing topical application as well as body aches and pains. Absolutely. If I go get a massage, I have my own little bottle of my, it's like a Noni CBG turmeric blend of organic fractionated coconut oil that I will take with me, that I want them to rub over my butt. Oh my gosh, that's so fancy. That's so fancy, I love it. Gosh, you know, you're making me feel like I need to have a gin and tonic tonight. Just to get that quinine in and make sure I'm taking care of myself during the COVID times. That's great. Doctor, is there anything you could tell us and the viewers what we could do now? What would you recommend if something that we could start taking now, just as a preventative, something easy that we can purchase either on your website or locally? Sure, I mean, so I'm, you know, maybe some people will feel this is a little controversial but my first answer would be turmeric. And not necessarily through us, just go to the grocery store and get some raw fresh turmeric and we just eat it. I'd keep a little finger of it next to my nightstand. And after we brush our teeth at night, sometimes like if I have a toothache or if I'm maybe I'm feeling a little sore throat or something, I'll just take a bite before bed and it's, you wanna keep that in your mouth actually, it'll kill off bacteria and fungus and viruses and it will whiten your teeth and it'll act on if I'm, like I said, if I have any kind of upper respiratory or sore throat or anything, it'll act on that. So I do like to do that before bed, before bed, after brushing teeth. So that's the thing you could just do in general. It's one of my all-time go-tos and my son does it too. I got him really early to start because for some people it doesn't taste good. We're so used to it and I'm not as sensitive to taste. That's just another disclaimer. So all my oils, to me they taste fine but I know a lot of people they're like, oh, it's so bitter, I can't do this. You know, I'm like, that's why I made the capsule. So I would say turmeric is a big one. Nony is ridiculous. The healing capacity of Nony is like off the charts amazing and then CBG is my most recent, my newest favorite. It's the, they're calling it the mother of all cannabinoids or even the stem cells of cannabinoids because it is the precursor to all the other cannabinoids in hemp and so there's either none or almost tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of THC so it will not become psychoactive. It will not get you high or stoned. It only has the medicine and so because it's that precursor of all the other cannabinoids in hemp, the medicinal value some people believe is much greater than even CBD. And so in my experience, I love CBD. We have also we grow CBD hemp as well and I absolutely love it. Personally for me, I like CBG a little bit better for general wellbeing in just like it doesn't make you sleepy, it just is like a general overall health prevention balancer. It also I read an article from Forbes a couple of weeks ago that said that their cannabis is now being used in phase one clinical trials for COVID and there are quite a number of articles and videos out there that discuss how cannabis can potentially be effective for COVID as well and just to say cannabis is hemp, hemp is cannabis, it's the same. Look, I am completely sold. I mean, you had me actually at plant-based to be honest but Dr. Janine, I would love to have you on the show again. The show unfortunately has to come to an end but I see that there would be so much more to talk about. Thank you so much for all this useful information and for everyone out there, the viewers do please go to Maui Majesty website, check out their products, order some, prevention is the best medicine as they say. Doctor, it was a pleasure having you on and wonderful meeting you. Thank you so much for having me, it was really a pleasure. Thank you so much, stay safe in Maui. I look forward to seeing you again and chatting with you and to everyone else. Thank you so much for watching. See you next time on Billions Vegan World. Aloha.