Benefits of Cinnamon with Bevin Clare

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I'm so excited to bring you this conversation about the benefits of cinnamon with herbalist Bevin Clare.  Bevin has a profound love for cinnamon ... she even named her daughter after cinnamon! Beyond that, she is filled with so much information about how to work with herbs beyond capsules and expensive products, so that you can really enjoy them in your everyday life.

You’ll also receive instant FREE access to Bevin’s luscious Heart Synergy Fudge recipe. With its easy-to-find ingredients, this recipe is such a wonderful example of how you can make food that’s both delicious and powerfully medicinal. I’m looking forward to hearing you ooh and ahh over it!

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► Which species of cinnamon to work with medicinally
► What size a medicinal dose of cinnamon is and several ways you might easily include this in your everyday diet
► Why including a variety of herbs and spices in your food every day, even in culinary (as opposed to therapeutic) amounts, can be so powerful

For those of you who don't know Bevin, she's an herbalist, nutritionist, homeschooling parent, a professor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health and the program director of the master's and clinical medicine program. She holds an MSC in infectious disease and is the author of Spice Apothecary, and a former president of the American Herbalist Guild. You can find her wandering the world with her two children, munching on spices, exploring markets, and immersing in the plant world.

Bevin’s experience as an herbalist is richly diverse and I couldn’t be more delighted to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS --

• 01:16 - Introduction to Bevin Clare
• 04:07 - How Bevin found her vocation
• 08:52 - The many hats Bevin has worn as an herbalist
• 14:01 - Visiting a cinnamon plantation
• 16:19 - The difference between cassia cinnamon and true cinnamon
• 20:57 - Working with cinnamon as medicine
• 24:03 - Bevin’s Heart Synergy Fudge recipe
• 27:19 - Herbs and spices as an everyday food-based practice
• 30:30 - Bevin’s book, Spice Apothecary
• 32:15 - “I don’t want to rely on this herb for the rest of my life.”
• 34:50 - Closing thoughts about cinnamon
• 36:40 - Bevin’s course about travel
• 42:27 - How is herbalism misunderstood by the general public?

Download Your Free Recipe Card!

Connect with Bevin

• Bevin’s website | https://www.bevinclare.com/
• Instagram | @Spice.Herb.Wander
• Facebook | @Spice.Herb.Wander

Transcript of the Benefits of Cinnamon with Bevin Clare Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello, and welcome to the Herbs With Rosalee podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as medicine, as food and through nature connection. I'm your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created this channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs With Rosalee podcast is shared on YouTube as well as your favorite podcast app. Also, to get my best herbal tips, as well as fun bonuses, be sure to sign up for my weekly herbal newsletter at the bottom of this page. Grab your cup of tea, and let's dive in.

Welcome to a new episode of the herbs with Rosalee podcast. I'm excited to bring you this conversation with herbalist Bevin Clare. Not only does she have a profound love of cinnamon ... I mean, she even named her daughter after cinnamon ... she's also filled with so much information about how to work with herbs beyond capsules and expensive products, to really enjoying them in your everyday life.

For those of you who don't know Bevin, she's an herbalist, nutritionist, homeschooling parent, a professor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health and the program director of the master's and clinical medicine program. She holds an MSC in infectious disease and is the author of Spice Apothecary, and a former president of the American Herbalist Guild. You can find her wandering the world with her two children, munching on spices, exploring markets, and immersing in the plant world. Well, welcome to the show, Bevin. I'm so thrilled to have you here.

Bevin Clare:
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I'm also honored that you fit this in because I know you just got back from yet another trip. So where have you just arrived from?

Bevin Clare:
Well, I'm always just getting back or just about to leave, I think. So I just got home yesterday from Stockholm, Sweden, and that was a fantastic little adventure, plenty of flowering plants and just that cool summertime there, which is really nice when you come from a warmer climate.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
And it was kind of a different trip too, I know, because this was no-kiddos trip. I mean, you've been traveling with your kids since they were practically babes in arms it seems like, at least toddlers, right?

Bevin Clare:
Yes.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
So this was kid-free trip, which doesn't happen very often.

Bevin Clare:
This was a kid-free trip. Yeah. They were left behind. So the theme of the trip was everything we couldn't do or wouldn't do if the kids were there. So I mean we didn't go too crazy or anything, but it was definitely ... We'd be like, do we want to take a eight-hour canal boat to an outlying archipelago island? And we're like, yes, that's what we want to do. That fits right in our theme. So that was different for me. It was also fun because we spent a lot of time on the water and in the canals. And the week before that I was in Panama with my family, with the canals. So it was these different types of canals, very different experiences, unintentionally.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I feel like that is so Bevin. You're like, well, two weeks ago I was in Panama. And so then I was in Stockholm the week before. You definitely travel a lot. And we're going to talk more about that. But before we do, I'm excited to hear how you got on this herbal path in the first place.

Bevin Clare:
So I have a lot of answers to that. I think like a lot of people who have had a life of plants, there were a lot of times in my childhood where I was dreaming about plants or mixing up potions or whatever I was doing. But I think that the time when I really realized it was my vocation and my life's work was when I was a young ... Well, I was a young herbalist. So I was in my late teens, almost in my early twenties, and I had already studied herbalism. And I don't know if you remember being a really young adult, but I definitely thought I knew more than I did at the time. You look back, I think, and go, oh gosh, what was I doing?

But I was in Southeast Asia. There's the travel theme. I was in Myanmar. And I didn't expect that people would bring me sick people because they thought I was either a doctor or a missionary because... or Peace Corps or something, somebody who would have medicines. And there wasn't really proper medical care or hospitals available in rural areas, and I was going to all these rural areas. And so I spent a lot of time telling people no and just feeling awful about it, that I couldn't help their sick ones. And one day I decided to say yes and to try to help, because I realized I know the tools here. I know a lot of these plants here, and I didn't really think that was going to work that well. It was kind of like, I just can't keep saying no to trying to help a person.

I don't know what I would've done now with my greater life experience and perspective. I don't think I was precocious enough at this point. I think back then I was like, well, herbs are amazing. They can do everything. Of course, this will help. Now I think I'm much more of a skeptic. And even though I still believe entirely and deeply in herbal medicines, I also have a lot more perspective, I think.

So I did decide to help, and it did help. And I think what happened was I realized the true capacity of herbalism in a way that, at that point ... And I would still think every single one of those people should be in a hospital with conventional care, but I guess realizing that when that's not available, that herbalism can actually really do things. It really, really is powerful in these situations. So I think, when I wasn't already ... I mean I was already a convert and already dedicated, but for me, I was like, this is it. This is my path. So I went and did a master's in infectious disease and really focused on that. But I think it was kind of predestined from day one. I mean, there's never really been any other career that I've considered or had since I was a child. So here we are.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Do you think it was those experiences in Southeast Asia that really made you interested specifically in infectious disease?

Bevin Clare:
Yeah, I think so, because I think it's one of these subjects where, if you have a bad infection, it's a really great place to go with conventional medicine. This is antibiotics, and all of these things work wonders, and they've saved my life. And yet we know there's limitations. We know that there's resistance. We know that there's all these things. And so I think that plants have just an entirely different approach, is the thing. And it's hard for us to wrap our minds around it. I think it's a lot ...

People love the war analogies with infection. And I don't think that they're inappropriate. I don't really like thinking about war, but I think conventional medicine and antibiotics are like dropping bombs, and they do stuff, kills a lot of things. And I think that herbal medicine is like infiltration and espionage and all of these different ... It's very subtle, and it's very nuanced, and it can have profound effects, but not in such an overt, blatant way. So I think when I realized that, and then I started learning more about mechanisms and so on

... So I became really inspired to see the place for both because the concomitant use of herbs and pharmaceuticals is just really fascinating in infectious disease, especially when there's no other options left. So I get all excited about that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
And before we dive into cinnamon, I'd love to hear about some of the different hats you've worn as an herbalist, because I think you've done some pretty interesting things. So you got your degree in infectious disease. And then how did that keep unraveling for you?

Bevin Clare:
So my first hat that I ever wore was when I was ... I think I just had my driver's license not for very long. So I was 16 or 17, and I grew up in New Hampshire. And the local university had these continuing education classes. And I remember I took one that was herbs 101, how to make a tea, a tincture, a salve, and learned about five herbs, and those kinds of classes. So I took that class, and I just loved it. And I think I spent all my time ... I was the most ambitious student ever in this little class. So I spent all my time doing this, and then I'd come early, and then I'd stay late and talk with the teacher who did this. And at the end of the class, she said ... Well, she didn't really want to teach it anymore. She was done, and she was wondering if I wanted to teach it.

I know, so she was like, "Well, clearly you're enthusiastic." And so I was like, okay. So teaching has always been a theme for me. I think I've always been a teacher one way or another in herbs. It used to be a lot of beginner stuff. Now it's a lot more advanced stuff. I enjoy both, but I do like to dig deeply into new things that excite me and share them. And a lot of times those are more of an advanced audience, but it depends. And so I've worn those hats. I've been a clinician for a long time in between, when I returned from my Southeast Asian travels for a few years. When I had my second child, I was doing a lot of clinical work. And then something had to kind of lessen, so then I kind of moved to a place where I wasn't accepting new clients and so on.

So I did that, and then I've really been involved ... I would say that, second to herbs and teaching, or even along with, it has always been the desire to make herbalism a viable career. It used to frustrate me so much when I was really young and I would meet all these wonderful herbalists and ask about their path on how they got going. And the theme was poverty basically. I mean, they might have been happy and enriched and ultimately found a way, but they lived in their cars. And I remember just thinking, well, this is a really honorable profession. Why does it have to be the way we do this?

So I was really interested in it as a career, and that brought me to being on the board of the American Herbalists Guild. And I was their youngest board member ever. David Winston asked if I would go on the board, and I was like, okay. I think I was 23 or so at that point. And so I've been on the board since, so it's been a little over 20 years, and I've been the president and various roles. And I really feel like that's a great organization to promote the viability of the profession of herbalists in a really good way, without it being exclusionary. And I'm a professor at a university for herbalism, so then there's another hat that I always think of as an extension of the teaching piece, of course. And I'm a parent, and I'm a hopeless gardener. I mean, I have very sloppy kind of wing-it survival-of-the-fittest sort of gardens, but I like having plants around so that too, but that's not really a job or anything.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
A deep joy when you're home.

Bevin Clare:
I do. I mean, really I do enjoy visiting and seeing what's happening out in the gardens and checking in and so on. So it's really nice. And then of course just having plants around to use and whatever I'm doing on a day to day basis, but I'm definitely not a thoughtful gardener at all.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
It's nice that herbs thrive on neglect because quite a few of them can maintain.

Bevin Clare:
They can. I know. It's more that some take over others and so on, but it's true. And I think what makes me not a great gardener is probably what makes a lot of herbalists not great gardeners, is the weeds are not weeds. And so it just ends up ... It's hard to decide who to pull out, and I'm not very good at that. So we end up with just craziness, which is fun too sometimes.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I was just having that conversation with my husband the other day because he was like, "You cannot leave all of the dandelions in the garden," he tells me. And I was like, "Well, I'm cultivating some. These ones are young. So I'll pull them next year when they're a little bit older and they have more of a root," but he was just like, "there's just too many dandelions in the garden," but I'm saving them.

Bevin Clare:
I know. They're useful for all sorts of things. So why not?

Rosalee de la Forêt:
So we're going to talk about cinnamon today, which I'm really excited for. And one thing I'm just curious about, have you been to cinnamon plantations and hung out with cinnamon trees?

Bevin Clare:
Yeah.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I bet you have.

Bevin Clare:
So I really love cinnamon, and I remember the first time I ever got to try it as a plant. It was just like, wow. I mean, it just grows on trees. And so it amazed me. And I really love cinnamon. I think it's just this ... I'm very passionate about sensory herbal medicine, very pleasurable herbal medicine, things that we can taste and smell and experience in our food. And we don't have to take them in a tincture or a capsule or concentrated this or that. They're just a simple part of everyday life. And so cinnamon meets that for me. And I actually named my daughter Cassia, which is not the true genus, the species that we should necessarily be using or the genus that we should be using, but still, I mean, naming her Cinnamomum wasn't going to work. So Cassia works.

I've seen cinnamon a few times, but this past January we traveled to Sri Lanka, Ceylon of course, and got to spend a lot of time around true cinnamon or Ceylon cinnamon, and it was awesome. I learned a lot about just why it's so much more expensive and unique, the growing, the cultivation practices, the harvesting practices. I mean, people are often third or fourth generation harvesters, how they specifically peel that bark off of the wood, and just how the Sri Lankan people use this plant. I just fell in love with it all over again. So it was very exciting, and cinnamon's just a big part of life there, generally as a savory element to cuisine, not sweet, whereas we think of it as kind of a sweeter thing. But it was so fun to just get to see that. And I have some fun videos of people peeling cinnamon. They use their toes a lot. It's really neat.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Wow. Cool. Well, since you broached the subject, I always want to back up a little bit and talk about what is cinnamon and Cassia versus Ceylon. Some folks might not know that.

Bevin Clare:
Right. So there's all these different cinnamons or things called cinnamons, but really we're looking at the genus Cassia and the genus Cinnamomum. So if you're just looking for a little flavor, like you want a little taste of cinnamon, really any of them can be used. They have different flavors, but if you travel around the world, you're going to experience a lot of the Cassia cinnamon, which kind of has a bold, more spicy flavor and so on. But there are a number of coumarins in it. And those coumarins can have some negative health effects over term, cumulative effects. So it's not something you ever have to be worried about, what cinnamon am I eating in this big cinnamon bun or this cinnamon cookie or something, but more like, if I'm going to be taking this regularly for my health and wellbeing, is this the right cinnamon?

So the other cinnamon, the Cinnamomum cinnamon, which is also called Vietnamese cinnamon or Ceylon cinnamon or true cinnamon, but it's Cinnamomum zeylanicum or verum. Verum is the contemporary name. That cinnamon is the one that has the most profound medicinal effects, although all of them have medicinal effects, definitely. But that's the one that's studied the most, and it's been the most relied upon for medicine, and it also has a sweeter, a little bit more mild taste, but really, I mean, it's really sweet, which I love about it, and a little bit more delicate and so on. And really the bark of that one is fragile and thin versus the Cassia cinnamon, which is very thick.

So if you ever have had cinnamon quills, which a lot of people are familiar with, that rolled up cinnamon, and it's a pretty woody thing, you could bang it on your hand or something and it wouldn't fall apart, that is the Cassia cinnamon. That's the one we often see rolled as quills. The Cinnamomum or true cinnamon, when it's rolled as quills, it almost looks like a very layered kind of flaky thing. And if you bang it, little pieces will fall off, and it's very flaky. And that's because that is actually the bark of a lot of different trees of cinnamon.

But the Cassia is just one piece of bark that kind of dries into this hard piece, because it's very thick when they harvest it. But the Cinnamomum, they kind of nestle many of these pieces of bark together, and then they all curl up and turn into these flaky sticks. So that's the difference also, but they're both readily available out there. If it doesn't say what kind of cinnamon it is, it's probably a Cassia cinnamon because they're going to advertise the true cinnamon or Vietnamese cinnamon or Ceylon cinnamon because it'll be more expensive, but it's readily available out there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Such a great example of the common name creating confusion. It's good to know what you're dealing with. I always have both cinnamons, or at least two different kinds of cinnamons anyway in my house, because like you said, if I'm going to make up some mulled apple cider, then I'll throw in Cassia sticks. But if I'm relying on it for medicine more frequently, then I definitely want the Cinnamomum verum.

Bevin Clare:
Yeah, such a cool plant.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Yeah, it is. I still can't get over it that you got to go visit because I guess it's a little bit on my bucket list to really see those trees, because there's just something ... I adore cinnamon, and it really tickles my fancy that, when I'm having cinnamon, I'm like, I'm enjoying tree bark right now. It's just something so cool about that.

Bevin Clare:
I know. Well, and also the leaves are really tasty, very, very tasty. So I don't think that that carries over especially well in any dried products, but it grows all over Sri Lanka, cinnamon does, wild and cultivated. And so my daughter learned to recognize it really well. So we would walk around, and she would always be grabbing cinnamon leaves and eating them, and especially the little young leaves. If anybody's ever tasted sassafras leaves, they're not dissimilar in some ways, but the bigger leaves can be quite cinnamon-y. So I love that. And I also love that, in Sri Lanka, they rarely cook with means other than burning coconut husks and the cinnamon wood, the wood from the center, because that's not the part that you get the cinnamon from. It's the outer bark. So then there's always a little element of scent from that, that they use the byproducts from the cinnamon harvest to fuel their fires for cooking. I thought that was very exotic to cook over cinnamon wood.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
That's lovely. Well, I'm curious what ways you like to work with cinnamon as medicine.

Bevin Clare:
Cinnamon is a really cool one because there's a huge amount of supporting evidence base, which I always love to see. I love it because it reinforces traditionally what we've always done. I also love it because I think having these clinical trials can help us to bring cinnamon into environments where maybe the door isn't as open to things that we can just say, oh, it's been used for thousands of years. And people are like, yeah, but there's no safety data or efficacy or something like that. But cinnamon has that.

It's also really cool because, unlike some plants, when you look at the research where you're like, oh, I need to take oodles of this ... So somehow we have to concentrate this and get it into an extract. And so you can take one little pill, and it equals 10 grams. Cinnamon works really well in food-like doses. So if you can fit something like a quarter of a teaspoon or even better a half a teaspoon into your daily diet of cinnamon, then you're good. I mean, that's really the recommended clinical dose in a lot of these studies. So that's really neat, because that's easy to do. I mean, adding that much to oatmeal or to yogurt or all sorts of different kinds of things, cinnamon toasters, whatever it is, even savories. It can be great.

And so we use a lot of cinnamon. In fact, I always keep cinnamon ... Unlike a lot of the herbs and spices I have, I keep them in this shaker jar that has two sides, one where it's the sifted side where you can sift it out and the other side was just open where you can just pour lots. And we use it all the time. And my daughter one day was like, what's the side with the holes for? Because we're always just dumping a lot in with the open side. I don't think I've ever measured out a teaspoon of cinnamon ever, but that's the way I often cook, but you can use a lot.

So I think you can use cinnamon in any way that you really want to use it. If you're trying to use it to support a healthy blood sugar balance, which is what a lot of people are using it for, then using it somewhat consistently, but you don't have to get too specific about dose. So one of my favorite ways to think about using cinnamon is, let's say you live in a multi-generational family household and diabetes runs in your family, and you know that it does. So it's in your mind, but you can add cinnamon to everyone's diet.

This is what's so fun about herbs because we can't do this with pharmaceuticals. We're not going to be like, let's take everyone from the toddlers to the elderly, take this pharmaceutical. No, that doesn't work. But with cinnamon it does. So even just starting off with this healthy practice of a botanical like cinnamon. And it's also totally non-toxic, so you don't have to worry about taking too much or anything like that. It's really safe. And I shared a recipe with you of one of my favorite recipes, ways to take cinnamon in a chocolate.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Yeah, let's talk about that. This looks so yummy.

Bevin Clare:
So I call it the synergy fudge, and it's a recipe that's great for both cinnamon and turmeric, which I often will combine together. And the idea is that these spices work much better when they're exposed to heat, fat and something kind of aromatic or spicy. And so you can prepare them traditionally like a curry where you add them in with some oil and onions and garlic and things like that, where they get that heat and they get that fat, and then you get some spices. But another way to do it is actually to use something like coconut oil and add in chocolate to it. And that kind of makes a soft fudge, I call it.

So one of the things that I like about this is that you can actually get a pretty large dose of both of them in a small amount. So a small piece of fudge that would be an inch by an inch or three centimeters by three centimeters or something, I don't know, you could get the equivalent of 10 or 12 capsules of herbs in there at times. You're going to definitely taste them, but it's a nice flavor, and you don't need to get that much of course. But if you're looking to make kind of a therapeutic medicinal preparation, you could put, let's say, two weeks worth of herbs that you want to take into a dose of fudge, cut it into 14 pieces, and just have one of those every day.

And to me, that's a much nicer way to take my medicine than some of the other options that are out there, also eases compliance. And I even have little silicone lollipop molds that I'll make little chocolate lollipops with different herbs in them, and that's another fun way to do it. So I love the idea of chocolate lollipop medicine. That works well for me.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Agreed. I love that you included those instructions on how to get a two-week dose in, because something that I think is just a little bit different from a clinical practice versus somebody who's ghost writing for a website is that you'll hear cinnamon is good for blood sugar, and then that's it. And it's not a discussion of how do you actually get that in. And then the other aspect too is people will say, well, I want food to be my medicine, but again, if you're using a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon once a week, it's not that that's bad, but we're not going to be getting really the dose that you would really want to see. So I love that this is yummy, but also very practical with those very specific instructions.

Bevin Clare:
To me, that's really the thing that I spend the most time working on professionally right now, as far as herbs go. If it's politics and so on, that's a little different. But I really want to erase that barrier because I think people ... They hear, oh, cinnamon is supposed to be really good to help support healthy blood sugar balance. And they're like, I should go buy some capsules. And I'm like, no, no, no, but people don't know. They even read, oh I'm supposed to take two grams a day. Well, what is that? How do I get two grams? Oh, I better buy some capsules. So figuring out how to dose these things in a daily way.

And for me that has a lot to do with my lifestyle. And I used to almost be embarrassed because for so long with what I do, there's always media requests. And people are like, so what herbal medicines do you take every day? And I always felt like, geez, I really need to get some herbs that I take every day because I'm really not very good at that. I have lots of things. I have lots of tinctures and capsules and powders and so on. But really what I take every day is almost all food based, but it's not just like I have this little tiny sprinkle. That's really very intentional. I really think about what I'm using and how much and what's in the garden and how we can make use of it. And I like that way. It's like life with plants versus just trying to choke down some supplements because I am supposed to.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
And it's not only more fun, but also that really adds up. Especially with Cinnamomum verum, to take that two, three grams a day in capsule form is so phenomenally expensive, if you're buying the capsules. I mean it really adds up, and it's less fun. So there's so many reasons to be enjoying it.

Bevin Clare:
And also with my kids, they are used to taking a lot of these things. They know it's just like eating vegetables or something. They know they're pleasurable, but they're also healthy for you, and those aromatics. And I think one of the things we often miss out on for kids is flavor. If you look at all the top foods that babies and children, you're supposed to start feeding babies and children, there's almost no flavor in most of them. I mean, it's true. There's plenty of flavor in a sweet potato or in an avocado. I mean, those things have flavor, but actually adding herbs and spices in the mix is really important because in places in the world where people eat a lot of strongly flavored foods, you start out from day one with all of these spices in your diet, and you get used to them.

And so a lot of the times in the West, we're starting kids with super bland foods or plain foods, and then we expect them to somehow transition into these highly flavored foods, and wonder why they don't want to do that. So I was really a big proponent of this and adding garlic to baby foods that I would make and things like that all the time because kids ... fun facts about spices that I always just absolutely love is, if a pregnant person has a baby inside them and they're eating these flavorful foods, the amniotic fluid actually takes on some of those aromatic flavors, and same with breast milk. So these are flavors that they're actually exposed to, and there's some fun research around that, looking at neonates and whether they like these smells or not based on whether, when they were in utero, they were consumed and they were used to flavors. So I love getting everyone on the spice bandwagon.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
And speaking of that, you not only love cinnamon, but so many spices. And you've written a book all about spices, and this is a wonderfully practical, easy to digest --unintended-- book about spices.

Bevin Clare:
So I wrote Spice Apothecary, and that is just looking at just the most common spices. So the ones that most people who cook would probably have around already, and really how to use those in therapeutic preparation, so preparations that maximize the quantity that you're using, but also making it pleasurable and easy and fun. So it's all about that. So you can figure out ... Let's say you want to support heart health, which spices are really ideal for that, and then preparations that you might be able to make those and take them on a daily basis without, again, having to buy a lot of expensive things that you have to choke down. So that's the idea of Spice Apothecary. And the cinnamon recipe is in there as well. But I know you're going to provide that to the listeners, which is great.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
So many wonderful recipes, highly recommend the book. This conversation is making me think about a question I commonly get, which is what I love to get because it's just exciting to open up the world a little bit. So the question I'll get is something along the lines of, well, I don't want to rely on herbs for my health. It's almost thinking herbs are drugs. Well, I don't want to have to take this drug for the rest of my life, or I don't want to have to take this herb for the rest of my life. So would you speak to that a little bit? I'd love to hear your response.

Bevin Clare:
I always like to put herbal medicine on a spectrum that starts in food, which a lot of them start way over in food, all the way to poison. And so it's really hard to pick a spot on there. So in an answer like that, the ones that are over on that spectrum, from what I would say are short term medicines and poisons, you don't really want to rely on those, ideally. But the ones that are over more in the food department, it's not really any different than saying I don't want to keep eating fruits and veggies because I don't really want to rely on them. You need a lot of these things. We evolved with plants. Humans and plants have ... You've been consuming plants forever. And the phytochemical diversity of the plants that most people consume now is so much less than it used to be. So we're actually really used to all of these more medicinal things being in our bodies. And so I actually think it's more reinforcing the way that we've lived for a long time than it is becoming reliant on them.

Now that said, when people are talking about this, they might be talking about a product that they're spending a lot of money on. And they're thinking, I don't want to have to take this for the rest of my life, and I totally get that. So if there is something, if a listener is taking something that feels like, yeah, this is a really good thing for me. I do want to take this for the rest of my life, but I don't really want to become reliant on it. It may be something that they can integrate into their food or their diet otherwise or find a different practice, because while we're talking about spices and the book talks about spices, there's a lot of herbs you can use as a powder that you can integrate into your diet and take in a lot of other ways. And the cost effectiveness, I mean, it can be 90, 95% cheaper to buy a powder. You have to know a little bit about the bioavailability of the plant or whether it needs to be extracted or not. But a lot of the times the things that we can take in a capsule, you can take in a powder and use it in a different way. So that fudge recipe, for example, you can use lots of different things in there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Oh my gosh, I'm already anticipating how much everyone's going to love that recipe. And I can't wait to hear from everyone what they think of it.

Bevin Clare:
Yay.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
We got a little away from cinnamon. Was there anything else that you wanted to add about cinnamon, your love of cinnamon?

Bevin Clare:
Well, I think one other thing that I'll add that's fun, especially for the herbalist people in the group, is that I think we forget a lot of times that cinnamon is demulcent, and it has that wonderful mucilage in it. It doesn't have as much as other plants, but I never really paid attention. When I would make mulled cider, for so many years, or something like that, and I'd add a lot of cinnamon, especially if I was using cinnamon powder in addition to a cinnamon stick, when I got to the bottom of the pot, there'd be this gloppy stuff. And I was always like, what is the gloppy stuff? What is this? Not really realizing it was cinnamon. And so if you like playing with medicine making and so on, you can actually really bring out the demulcency and mucilage in cinnamon, and it can be a lot of fun to do that. So I definitely encourage that element of cinnamon. It's fun to have this moist, spicy plant. So I think that's it for cinnamon. But if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them that come in.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I'm so glad you mentioned the demulcent because there isn't a lot of warming demulcents out there, and cinnamon is really a wonderful one for that. Well, I'm going to put you on the spot. Do you know how many trips you've taken this year? We're recording this in July.

Bevin Clare:
I don't know. I mean, I think I could probably answer it and say I've been to maybe eight countries this year so far.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Eight countries this year. Not bad, not bad.

Bevin Clare:
[laughter].

Rosalee de la Forêt:
I love following you on social media and kind of living vicariously through your adventures. And this year when I was in Europe and I got COVID, you helped me with testing and everything, just figuring out how to handle all of that, so deeply appreciative. And because you travel so much and everywhere and have so much experience, I'm especially grateful that you have a course on your site about traveling. And it's so relevant too. You have a lot of information about what traveling is today, because it's, in 2022, not the same as it was traveling in 2019. It's not specifically herbal related, but for anybody interested in travel, I highly recommend going to BevinClare.com and checking out what you have to offer there. Do you want to add anything about that class?

Bevin Clare:
Yeah. I think that travel, it's really possible to make it really accessible, if it's something that you're interested in. I mean, I feel, I don't know, a little bashful about the amount of travel that I do because I think it makes it look like I'm some fabulous millionaire and just do all of these crazy things. But the reality is that I plan really far ahead, and I look for fabulous deals. So when I'm thinking about Panama and Copenhagen, i mean, sorry, and Stockholm in the summer, we found tickets to Panama for less than $200 and used some hotel points to get a hotel and things like that. So it's a lot of playing this game. I love looking for travel bargains, and that's kind of how I structure a lot of this. So I teach people how to do some of that, but also some of the logistics. Really, especially for families, but I think for everyone, it really opens your eyes to travel.

And I think that there's a lot of ways to do it that are a lot more in reach. And it's my dream that every ... I have absolutely no problem with Disney, but I think about every family that spends all this money to go to Disney every year or something like that. You could go so many different places in the world and experience these cultures and all sorts of different things to do with quite a bit of ease, if you just have a little bit more knowledge maybe about how to navigate some of that. So that's what I'm trying to do is make becoming a traveler a lot more accessible to people.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
You often share what you paid for your airplane tickets and how you're making it work financially, which I appreciate because it's really opened my eyes. It is really amazing what you do and how you play the game, and you're a homeschooling mom. And I often think about what an amazing education your kids are getting as this supplemental travel. And I often just even wonder about your kids, and what are they going to be growing up having this experience of seeing the world?

Bevin Clare:
It's remarkable. I mean, they lack some perspective because I'd be like, what do you guys want to eat? They'd be like, we want to go to Shanghai and get that cucumber salad or something. And I'm like, I mean in the realm of actual reality of what we're ... But I grew up traveling a little bit, and it really made an impression on me. And I think people understand ... I feel like one of the challenges that we have with raising children, the luckiest children, the children who have a safe and loving environment to be raised in, is that there's no opportunity to get out of your comfort zone. And travel is fundamentally uncomfortable, a lot of the time. It's disorienting. You don't get your foods. You don't get your bed. Things are unfamiliar. There's a lot of unexpected situations. And I think that because travel does it often in a very safe way, this is not generally a trauma building experience when you have your flight canceled or you can't get the food that you are used to, it's about building resilience. So I think that resilience building is so important.

And as you mentioned, we got home last night. And when we were coming in last night, our flight was diverted. Actually our landing was aborted at the last minute, and our flight was diverted, and we had to go to a different city. So instead of getting scared or panicked or irritated, my son was like, "I need to go talk to the pilots and learn more about this." And the kids are looking online what actually happened and what the records are like for this, how frequently it happens, what's the most likely outcome of what's going to happen. And so I think taking these situations where it totally ... I mean, we could have gotten stressed and upset, but it wouldn't have helped at all, at all. We still would've been in exactly the same situation. So I really like travel for that. It helps challenge. It doesn't mean that we don't all lose it sometimes. Thankfully, I always say I travel with the kids a lot. The goal is just that we lose it one at a time, not all at the same time when we're stressed out about something. But I think we'd understand each other so much better in the world if we just traveled a little bit.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Well, I look forward to hearing about your next adventures as always. And before we go, Bevin, I have one last question for you. It's the question everyone's getting in season five. And that question is, in what ways do you feel like herbalism is misunderstood by the general public?

Bevin Clare:
Well, there's so many ways. But I think I'll pick something that's kind of conventionally topical, and that is that herbalism exists really as an alternative to conventional care and conventional medicine. And I think that's a very unfortunate misunderstanding, that it's considered an either/or, or even that if you have a lot of problems with what's going on conventionally, that you would turn to herbal medicine instead and it would be the answer, because a lot of the times it isn't. There's a lot of situations where, sure, we used herbalism in the past in a lot of situations, and really the main reason is because we didn't have something better. So it doesn't mean that herbalism isn't incredible and wonderful, but there's a lot of situations where it's most appropriately used from a perspective of the individual and what is best for them. And that might be a combination of things.

And so I think that folks will often think that. And I've found between COVID and all sorts of different situations that a lot of people assume that ... And I see also when I first meet students coming to the graduate school or things like that, they'll often say, oh yeah, well I would never take medications or pharmaceuticals or something like that. And that's an important way to relate to somebody who uses herbal medicine. And I think it's a real shame because I think we don't have to narrow our options. We really have the opportunity to integrate things really thoughtfully and to get the best of both worlds. And they're both so important. So I think that that's really misunderstood a lot of the time.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
That's a great, important distinction of it doesn't have to be either/or. I like that.

Bevin Clare:
Yeah, absolutely.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Well, Bevin, thank you so much for taking the time today to chat with me and to share your love of cinnamon with all of us and especially your wonderful recipe. And again, highly recommend your book to anybody who's thinking, yeah, I'd like to be working with herbs and spices in my everyday life. It's an excellent book for that. So thank you so much, Bevin.

Bevin Clare:
Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Thanks for watching. Don't forget to click the link above this transcript to get free access to Bevin's Heart Synergy Fudge recipe. You can also find Bevin at www.BevinClare.com. If you enjoyed this interview, then before you go, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter below so you'll be the first to get my new videos, including interviews like this. I'd also love to hear your comments about this interview and this lovely spice. I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks. I'm so glad you're here as part of this herbal community. Have a beautiful day.