Body Beautiful #18

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

program and I do think that the external is the smaller percent of the whole. I hear it all the time and I think probably most people agree that beauty is more than skin deep and I think that it just has to project from within. So anything going on inside is going to be more important than what's on the outside.

Deb Soule:

As we begin to help educate even healthcare providers to be able to integrate back into one's that common sense, that connectedness of the earth, of life. Because that's really the essence that's going to sustain us. It's not as much relying on just pills out of a bottle, but the larger connectedness of the Earth.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast live number 18, airing on January 15, 2012. The theme of this week's show is Body Beautiful. As we've talked about in prior shows, we believe that the beauty of the body goes beyond the physical and the superficial and we think that you will see this in today's show. Our guests today include Dr. Ed Giacoma from Acari in Portland, Deb Soule of Avena Botanicals and Ann Belden of Hardy Girls Healthy Women. Each of our guests has a unique approach to beauty and wellness, and yet they all intersect. We think that you'll find a lot of interesting ideas in this show. We hope that you will listen further and we welcome you to join us. Thank you for being part of our world. We are fortunate here at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast to to be sponsored by the University of New England The University of New England sponsors a segment we call Wellness Innovations, in which we discuss new and interesting findings in the world of wellness. This week's new and interesting finding has to do with men. What's especially interesting is that we've been talking about, or we will be talking about, the body beautiful and we think about beauty in women often. But it turns out that men have some of the same issues that women do. According to a study out of the BBC, Men are most unhappy about their beer bellies Four out of five men confess to being unhappy about their body, suggests an online survey by the University west of England. The center for Appearance research at the UWE studied the responses of 384 British men with an average age of 40. The biggest body issue for them was their beer belly and lack of muscles. 35% of respondents said they would trade a year of their life to achieve their ideal body weight or shape. Research suggests that it's not just women who talk among themselves about their body image. For more information on this wellness innovation, visit the BBC website at www.BBC. for more information about the University of New England, visit www.une.edu. looking for a bit of New Year's inspiration? Purchase the book Our Daily Tread and benefit the organization Safe Passage. This week's quote from Our Daily Tread is from Thomas Merton. Our real journey in life is interior, a matter of growth, deepening and an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. For more quotes like this, purchase Our daily tread@islandportpress.com support for the Dr. Lisa

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

joining me on today's Deep Dish is my co host Genevieve Morgan. Hi Jen.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And our topic today is Body Beautiful.

Genevieve Morgan:

I know it's an interesting topic, especially

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

for the New Year, huh? Yeah.

Genevieve Morgan:

All those people out there trying to live up to their resolutions.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I recently posted something on Facebook right after the New Year and I'm reading this interesting book about compassion. I don't remember the author or the title, but the book is about compassion and he put this quote in there. And this is Beauty tips courtesy of Audrey Hepburn. For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For poise, walk with the knowledge you never walk alone. If you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arms. And of course, this comes from Audrey Hepburn, who was herself quite beautiful.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes. I mean, she's what I would say everybody's. Well, not everybody, but a lot of people's dreams in terms of outward appearance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, outward appearance, but also I believe that she did a lot of work internationally for aid organizations. So she was doing what she said that others should do in order to make themselves more beautiful.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, the topic of beauty is so complicated, and I'm glad we're actually addressing another show towards it because it's something that we all struggle with our outward appearance and feeling good about ourselves. And I know you have a lot to say about this because you deal with self image and self esteem in your practice quite a bit.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My practice is really unusual in that I'm not your standard doctor. People will come in to see me for back pain. And I think about levels of wellness, and I think we've talked about this before. You can come in for back pain, and that's sort of the lowest level of wellness, is just take care of that back pain. But then as you move up through these levels of wellness, you actually become more and more integrated with yourself. So. So the next level might be what types of foods are you eating that can detract from your health or can be healing? And then the next level up is really working with are you living your most authentic life? And at the highest level, my practice is about helping people reach that most authentic life.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I think the goal in integration is to have people feel like the outside matches the inside or the inside matches the outside. Because so much of anxiety and stress is the scratchiness between what we perceive ourselves to be and how we feel perceived by the world. And so much of that is the interface of the body.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, it is. It's interesting because I started a couple of years ago putting together the blog, which I've talked about before, and talked about feeding myself, and it was about food. And then I went and started studying qigong. And qigong is about energy. And there is energy in food, but there's also energy in movement. And it wasn't until I got away from being focused on my body and the physicality represented by the food and got into my body and the energy that it needed to be beautiful that I actually started to heal and become whole. I have this experience in my own personal life when I began studying acupuncture in 2006. It was after I had spent a number of years as a physician in Western Medicine and doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. Everybody told me, oh, you're so good at being a doctor. You're so good at writing. You're so good at these things. So everybody else around me sort of created the identity that I was the outside. The outside. So when I started to take back my own self, it was almost like I didn't know who that self was. So this was that feeding myself thing that I needed to do. But before I even got to the feeding myself thing, I actually had to lose myself just a little bit more. I actually. I began running because I wanted to reclaim this body that was mine, and that was my stress relief. So I would run, and then I would run more, and then I would run more, and I actually. I starved myself. I mean, I had what is considered to be an eating disorder very easily developed.

Genevieve Morgan:

That's a very common thing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very common. But we think about it in teenagers, and we think about it in teenage girls, and this is something I had struggled with in my own life. I was in my late 30s, and what I found was that I lost the ability to look at. To see who I really was.

Genevieve Morgan:

You mean in mirrors or just in. When you were looking at. That must have just been so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It was alienating. It was extremely disconcerting when I lost so much weight that my. I could pull my pants down and they were still zippered and buttoned. You know, I lost so much weight that I would look in the mirror and a ghost would look back at me. I had no idea what I actually looked like. I had no idea how I couldn't see myself anymore. It was as if I had become a ghost. Literally looking in the mirror, I had no idea. And this was a very strange and extremely frightening experience for somebody in her late 30s who has. You know, I had given birth to three children, and I had been a doctor for many years, and it was. I had to completely lose myself as a physical human being before I could start to sort of rebuild myself.

Genevieve Morgan:

Was there a moment where it switched, where you decided you wanted to begin feeding yourself and reincarnating?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The moment where it switched was the moment that I went running and realized I actually couldn't feel my body anymore. Now, that was even worse. So I went running one day, and I still run, but I run in a much healthier way now. But I realized it was as if my head was sort of running around this neighborhood, and I literally couldn't feel my body anymore. And I returned home, and I was so frightened that I had ceased to exist as a human being that I felt like I needed to. There was only one person who was going to help me, and it was me. And that. That was the moment. That was the moment that I realized if anybody was going to feed me, it was going to be me. And if anybody was going to find her body beautiful, it had to be me. I had to reclaim myself and I had to love myself.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and I think we've spoken about it before in other shows how in order to get to that point, you often have to go through a crisis like you went through, where you face deep, deep fear and deep loss, and then an opening happens and you're able to, like a phoenix, come out of the ashes into something new. And I'm interested that it had. It came about for you through a very. Through the physical. Again, the physical interface of your body. But you also had some indication that it was a spiritual need and a professional need because you changed how you practiced.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I did. And I went from practicing traditional family medicine. I had a master's degree in public health. I had a degree in preventive medicine. I had many, many years of standard medical education, which I don't. I don't regret getting. But I went from doing that to bringing the acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and finally the medical qigong into my practice because I needed that spiritual piece to sort of complete what I had to offer as a doctor and as a person.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and we talk about this a lot, too, about the five underlying aspects of health and how we're trying to promote that in the world with this show. But what you're saying is that you had to address all five of them, not just one, that the more you went towards one, the less you could do the other four.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. And I had to do this for myself because this is one of the things that gets lost often when we practice medicine, is if we aren't doing as we say and we aren't manifesting the spirit of our words, we can't be as effective as doctors, as healers of any sort, or as parents, as role models. So I actually had to get to this place, and it's been in stages, and I've had to shed a lot of things in my life and come to love who I am as an individual.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, what would you say to those people out there who are struggling with their resolutions right now, who have decided they want to lose weight or get muscle or look younger and are feeling. Are beating themselves up because they're not going to the gym? As much as they resolved to do or they're not managing to fulfill what they wanted to do, what would you say to them?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I would say spend some time deciding what you want the rest of your life to look like, how you see yourself interfacing with the world. Spend less time focusing on I'd like to lose five pounds. I would like to be a blonde. I would like to spend less time with the physical and decide how you'd like to walk this earth. And for some people, that means writing, because some people will write. For some people, that means painting. For some people, that means music. But return to your childhood, to a place where you felt happiest, and somehow engage in an activity that reminds you that this is who you really are and see if you can project this forward into your life.

Genevieve Morgan:

And that's the true body beautiful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I agree. That is the true body beautiful. Thank you, Jen, for spending some time talking to me. I know this was an intensely personal deep dish, so.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I think it's important for people to understand that you've gone through many of the same struggles that they've gone through. I go through them, too. And that we're all just humans walking, trying to walk the earth more beautifully.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I agree. Thanks, Jen. Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast, our show is called Body Beautiful, and we have a very special guest with us today, Dr. Ed Giacoma, who is the medical director at the Acari Medispa here in Portland. So we're pretty honored to have you here today. Thank you for coming in.

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Dr. Giacoma, good morning and thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was impressed by your bio. I was so impressed. I told you before we got on air that there's so much of it, it's hard for me to choose. Tell me a little bit, what is sort of the most interesting thing about your background and how you got to be the medical director at Acari?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

I think the most interesting thing about my background is the range of training and the various individuals that I work with that help us all to bring together and focus on wellness and body beautiful. Think that Acari is unique in that they bring together the wellness, beauty and style that I think really helps to define that beauty, but also allows one to project that beauty in a way that is uniquely your own.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In an earlier show, we spoke with Christina Sterling and Eliza Harris. They both work in the Medispa as well. Their background is not strictly medical. Yours is. Give me. Just walk me through your medical background because it is impressive and the fact that somebody with your Medical background has chosen to go into the Beauty Style Wellness Collaborative model. It really means something. So walk me through your background.

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Well, thank you. It is somewhat storied. I think the first thing is that I did begin life in medical school in Burlington, Vermont, where I was certain I was going to go into family practice. And over the course of my years there, determined that that really was just a facet and that I really wanted to be able to do something more visually. So going from there to an internship in internal medicine, but with an eye on ophthalmology, I did end up going through a great program down in Virginia. University of Virginia trained me to look at people both in terms of how to get them to see better, but also how to look inside and to look at themselves in a way that would help them to understand themselves maybe a little bit better. And to help them understand how to project themselves in a way that would make them perhaps more happy as well as seeing their world more clearly. That led me to the cosmetic world. And through various twists and turns, I did end up meeting a variety of, I would call them, movers and shakers in this world who have helped me to understand how to look at skin, how to look at people, how to focus on everything from diet, nutrition, to the more mental aspects of how we define ourselves. And really to be somebody who can orchestrate behind the scenes with all of the other specialists to bring all of this to play and to help people ultimately project themselves in the best way possible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What type of interest did you have visually when you were growing up? I assume you didn't go into medical school. You said you wanted to do family practice. So how are you interested in the visual field per se?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Well, that's a great question. When it comes to medicine, understanding how a body works is obviously an important part of that. But at the same time, most of us use our sight as how we perhaps most interact with the world around us. We have every other sense at our disposal. But visually, we can see beyond the range that we can easily touch or smell or even hear. So this sense, I think, carries a little bit more weight in some ways than some of our other senses. And I think that that probably is what attracted me in that direction. Being able to restore sight is a wonderful thing. And that's something that I tasted early on in medicine. Had an opportunity to rotate with a very experienced eye surgeon and to watch the smiles on faces coming out of his office was something special. But then to take it steps further, to look at different ways of reconstructing somebody's eyes, eyelids, mid part of their face. Realizing that when we connect with an individual, our first sense of that individual is often visual, that we're looking at their eyes and getting a sense for their level of concentration, what they're thinking about, all the little ranges that go along with their personality that can sort of instantly be grasped with that quick glance that has also attracted me. And I do find that, that being able to make little changes in somebody's face, mostly in a restorative way, just helping somebody get back to where they were or where they really would like to be, can often help lift a person's spirits, allow them to feel more confident and project themselves better. So this is maybe the more critical part of my expertise. But I also find that just listening to people and understanding what mental health makes them tick helps me to bring the other collaborative efforts together that helps them to get to that better place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The eyes are such an intimate part of the body. And before I went to medical school and did my training as a resident and a medical student, I had no idea we would go into surgery and you're operating on someone's eyes, you could not be more close to them. Has that been your experience?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

I would say that definitely is my experience. And knowing that when you're operating on something like that, that there is very little room for error, that your senses are on high alert and that you're really interested in trying to do what you can to help that individual either in regaining something that's been lost or helping to enhance something that's already there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so this translates to this high level of intimacy and wanting to do what's best for the the individual. This is translated into your working with Acari and really trying to sort of maximize a person's inner beauty.

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Absolutely. And my focus is to help them get to that wellness, beauty and style through the comfort, the safety, the efficacy of the kinds of procedures and things that we can offer, in addition to the other collaborative efforts that I've referred to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When we had Eliza and Christina on, they talked about the sense that it's more than just external. And I think you also discussed this as well, that there are things that go on within a person emotionally that need to take place in order for them to become the most beautiful that they can be. Would you agree?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

100%. And I do think that the external is the smaller percent of the whole. I hear it all the time. And I think probably most people agree that beauty is more than skin deep. And I think that it just has to project from within. So anything going on inside is going to be more important than what's on the outside.

Genevieve Morgan:

Are there dangers involved with these procedures?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

I guess to a degree it depends on how invasive a procedure we choose, and that often references the needs, wants, desires of the individual, how far they want to progress. If we're talking about something as small as just reducing a little brown spot that would look more aged on their face, that has a relatively low risk. If we're talking about something like correcting an eyelid or eyebrow, that has a little higher risk of if we're looking at some injections that are very temporary, lower risk, injections that are more permanent, higher risk. So it's a little bit what the needs and wants of the individual are, as well as what we can perceive as to be in their best interest and work with them on that so that they come to that same collaboration with us, that we're working as a team.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Have you gotten any sort of pushback from the medical community for the type of work that you do and the work that you do in the Medispa? I mean, it's very clear to me that there is a direct connection between all of the things that you're talking about and health. Do you think that the medical community would agree with you?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Not always. And I do find that some of my colleagues are much more interested in pushing a quick pill or finding some quick fix to get a patient on their way. That kind of goes against the idea of learning more about them, what makes them tick, and then perhaps sometimes approaching it in a different way. So I will admit that I think we are sometimes a little bit at odds with some of our medical colleagues, not necessarily in a completely negative way. I think that they do have a different approach, and as long as they're willing to open their eyes and their minds to the idea that different isn't always wrong or bad, that I think that we can easily work together as a medical team. I'm about teamwork and finding the win wins and trying to keep the patient first.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you're open to collaborating with practitioners within the community in addition to the practitioners within the Ikari world?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Absolutely. Sometimes we stumble across problems that go well beyond a simple cosmetic and these need to be referred out to the appropriate, more medical level of care. And so we do always keep our eyes and ears open for those individuals who would collaborate well with us on these things and who would offer the best services to the patients that we initially connect with. Over to Acari.

Genevieve Morgan:

We're wondering here what is on the horizon? What's in the future for Medispa practice?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

That's a great question. One of the things that attracted me to the world of ophthalmology was technology. And I do find that technology continues to push the envelope, particularly now in the world of cosmetic care. Beyond the day to day technology that we deal with, there are some interesting new exciting things on the horizon. Ways of dealing with excess fat, ways of dealing with ugly toenails. All these things that many of us struggle with every day. I think that, that we will have newer, better fixes. But I also think that one of the things most on the horizon for us are these collaborative efforts with some of our colleagues and bringing some of these additional specialists in who can most help us with things that are a little further afield from eyes. So we do have a podiatrist and I like to say that we can now cover head to toe, but also having these great additional skincare specialists. So our estheticians who constantly are pushing their envelopes to see stay current and to be able to offer the best services.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I also heard that there might be a dentist or a periodontist coming

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

on board and this was something I was going to get to, but have to say that it's still preliminary, so I don't want to overly raise expectations, but to say that we have been in ongoing dialogue because I think when it comes to those smiles that it is important to keep your gums and teeth in great health. We know that some of our health comes from our gums or can be influenced by them. There was a great study that showed that people had a high rate of heart disease if they didn't keep their tooth health, and particularly their gum health up to snuff. So we do understand that our mouths play an important role in our health and wellness. And having somebody on board who understands those concepts and can help us to channel some of that in their direction, I think is going to be another important feature to our practice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out more about you, your practice and Acari?

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Well, we are still in the process of developing our website and that is always a great place to turn. I would recommend to anybody with any interest to give Eliza Harris a call at Acari. She is our clinical Care coordinator and is in the best position to answer a lot of upfront questions, but also to help schedule our free consultations. And that's another thing that I think sets Acari apart in that all of our specialists are available and we love to talk and would like to invite people in and have that opportunity to help counsel them a little bit and learn a little bit more about them and see how we can help folks in our medispa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thank you for coming in today and talking to us about the Body Beautiful. Genevieve Morgan and I, we're, as we said, we're fans of Alan. Over to Kari. We thank him for his support. We thank you for being a part of our show.

Dr. Ed Jaccoma:

Thank you. It's been a great pleasure being a part of the show and getting to know you folks a little bit. I want to say probably since this may be one of the first programs in the New year to wish everybody a happy New Year and to also say that they are welcome to come visit us at a car anytime.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So welcome to 2012. This segment that we're doing, the Maine Magazine Minutes, is one that we've done for the entirety of the fall. This Maine Magazine Minutes is one that is so dear to my heart because I met Deb Zoell when I was a family medicine resident at the Maine Medical center with my friend Craig Schneider, who is now the director of the Integrative Medicine Residency at the Maine Medical center. And so many intersecting circles. Deb was actually profiled in the inaugural Wellness issue of Maine Magazine, as was my friend Dr. Craig Schneider,

Genevieve Morgan:

as were

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you, as I was as well. And Genevieve Morgan was the writer for Maine Magazine. And of course nobody knew any of this stuff was happening. And here we are and we'll have Craig Schneider on the show coming up in a few weeks. But we have Deb on the show now and it was, I think, before the show even began, I was up in that neck of the woods and I said, and I went over to Deb's new building because you're building a new building or I think it's built now? No, not quite.

Deb Soule:

Still being built.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Still being built. And I kind of inserted myself into her life. I kind of forced myself in and said, I have this new radio show and podcast, Deb, and I would really like you to be on it. And she said, I'm not really sure I remember you, but I would be happy to. And now she's here, so I will let Jennifer Morgan introduce her. It's very exciting to have you, Deb.

Deb Soule:

Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi, Deb. I'm so glad you're here. You are the founder and herbalist, one of my favorite companies in Maine, Avena Botanicals. I told you before that I use your fairy flower cream every day. And I'm just so happy that you're actually here in the flesh. And I wanted to talk a little bit about your relationship first to Maine. Can you give the listeners out there a brief bio of how you came to start your company in Maine?

Deb Soule:

Well, I was born and raised here, and so I have obviously a deep connection to Maine, and I've done some traveling. But I went away briefly to college in Vermont, and then I transferred back to Maine. I did my undergraduate work at College of Atlantic up in Bar Harbor. So for me, it's just there was never a question that I did not want to live here. I love Maine. I love the landscape. I grew up more. More in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. That was really where I began my journey with plants as a teenager, learning some of the wild plants, some of the edible plants, and then began gardening. So soon after graduating from college, there wasn't even a question for me that I wanted to stay here in Maine. And I was just fortunate to have a friend who invited me to come to West Rockport, which is in the Canvan Rockland area. And that's where I started my first medicinal herb garden. And I.

Genevieve Morgan:

And that was over 25 years ago.

Deb Soule:

Yeah, 26 years ago. I started my business in a little corner of a very small house, growing herbs even then. Yeah, I started my first garden, my first medicinal herb garden, 26 years ago and started Avena. And I think, what, 1984 was, 1985, I went to the Common Ground Fair with my first mail order catalog. And that's how I kind of started.

Genevieve Morgan:

Will you talk a little bit about herbal medicine? Because in the days now of high tech and big pharma, I think a lot of people forget that most medicine comes from plants.

Deb Soule:

It does. Such a big question, but I'll say that kind of to bring us down into a statistic. The World Health Organization still states that 85% of people worldwide rely on herbal medicine as their primary form of medicine. So that's to just say historically, we're looking at plant medicine as being used for what, 5,000 years. You know, the texts of Chinese medicine, texts of the Ayurvedic system have been written down for that long. And certainly indigenous people around our planet have used and continue to use plants as their primary form of medicine. So we're talking about something very old, something that has a long history of use, safe use. So nothing new here. You know, this is a very, very old medicine. So for me, you know, as a young person, I just became very interested in. It made sense to me that plants can help us in so many levels, including for, you know, for health conditions.

Genevieve Morgan:

Avena botanicals does more than topical skin products. Tell us more about what kind of things you do.

Deb Soule:

Oh, it's interesting. You know, I started, you know, and I started learning to make herbal teas and herbal tinctures, which is a water alcohol based extract. I was very focused on herbs that really serve people for a variety of health conditions. Bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, the common cold, sinus infections. And then as I started to study plant medicine more, I began to really recognize that two things. One is that there was a lot of pretty cruel testing of animals happening in the cosmetic industry, which I was very opposed to and continue to be very opposed to. And also that what people were putting on their skin was pretty toxic. And that was, you know, 20, 25 years ago where there wasn't as much information as there is today. So I became very committed to making herbal body care products that were made from only organic herbs and organic oils.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and as a user of your products, I know that there's a certain amount of common sense. It's almost like your brain and your nose and your recognizes what's in. You open up a tin or a jar and it smells good and you sort of want it. There's something natural about the relationship and it's not something you feel you have to do, it's something you want to do.

Deb Soule:

You want to. Yeah. And I think, Lisa, what you're saying, you know, as, as we begin to help educate even healthcare providers who have been so book trained and so deeply, you know, having to do you know, seven years, eight years, 10 years of medical school to be able to integrate back into one's life that common sense, that connectedness of the earth, of life, because that's really the essence is going to sustain us. It's, it's not as much relying on just, you know, pills out of a bottle, but the larger connectedness of the earth.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And when I visited you up in Rockport.

Deb Soule:

West Rockport.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, West Rockport, you were building a new building because you were trying to comply with FDA regulations, but you weren't unhappy about it or angry. I mean, I don't have the sense that you, that you are pushing back against modern technology per se. You really are about integration.

Deb Soule:

Yeah, definitely. And I've seen so much change in 26 years or, you know, since I started 35 years ago. And there's a lot of positive things and there's some challenging things too. And five, six years ago, the FDA began to work on these new regulations that I think have a very important place for the large industry because herbal medicine has made its way into sort of even into pharmaceutical companies. They have herbal lines which I have real question about the quality. But as the industry has grown, there has been a really important need for creating certain regulations. The challenge was for small businesses like myself. I mean, I have nine people that work with us year round. We're very tiny compared to the larger industry. So we were only able to build this building because the state. We were able to be in a grant program called Farms for the Future, which I worked through two phases of that grant program. It's an excellent program for agricultural based businesses which avena is because we grow 70% of the herbs that go into our remedies. We grow right on our three acre. We have three acres of medicinal plants. So that program allowed me to then apply for a second grant focus, which I got some money for. And then it allowed me to enter into a larger grant program called Community Development Block Grant. And I was able to get maybe a third of the building funded through a grant. And then I was able to apply for a small interest loan through the state also. So that it was never a question for me.

Genevieve Morgan:

You really are a Mainer.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes.

Genevieve Morgan:

You're cobbling it all together for whatever you can do.

Deb Soule:

I was determined that Aveena was going to be able to continue to offer our incredible herbal medicine to people. And I wasn't going to let a regulatory agency stop me. And it's, you know, it's had its challenges, but I remember one day just standing in Our old kitchen, which was really, I mean, we're in an 1830s farmhouse. So we were literally in an old kitchen and saying, okay, what are we going to do here? And I just got this video vision, like move forward here and the support that you need is going to come forward. And that's been, that's happened the whole every step. I have trusted this process. And so they're shingling the roof right now and the windows and doors actually, funny enough, are arriving today. So in the next week we'll be closed in and then hope our goal is to be moved in by the end of March. And we've also done a beautiful job at creating this building. So like we sketched little poems and prayers into the actual floor of the. We had to pour a cement, you know, a cement floor. It's a radiant floor heat. And we actually put little herbs into the corners of the building to really sort of ground us to the earth as we're building, you know, a really modern day building.

Genevieve Morgan:

Can people come visit your facility or how do they find you or reach you?

Deb Soule:

Well, people certainly, certainly. I give herb walks all summer long and various classes and we will have an open house probably this summer. Once a year we'll have a big open house because the FDA regulations don't allow people to actually come into our new building. We have a retail space so people can enter, but the actual new building will probably have one once a year where people could actually come in and tour it.

Genevieve Morgan:

Deb, what are your most popular products?

Deb Soule:

Well, the Heal All Salve is one and that's a topical herbal salve made with organic olive oil and beeswax and about nine or so different plants. And I made that salve like 27 years ago and I have never changed a recipe. It just has been so beneficial for a variety of just simple cuts and wounds for healing. But Also probably about 15 years ago, I started to have nurses call me and that's how I found that the Helal salve was beginning to be used amongst nurses working in oncology departments for both preventing and treating radiation burns for women who were receiving radiation for breast cancer. And that obviously I was so grateful and so happy to hear that that salve had made its way into really a very strong treatment, a radiation treatment and was of great benefit. I mean, I had somebody show up at my door one day who said, I've been through two rounds, two separate rounds of radiation and your Helos app is the only thing that totally worked for me. So I was so happy. So that interesting has continued to be one of our top sellers. The little rose petal elixir that we make from I just gather. I used to go out to some of the islands and gather the red Rosa rugosa petals. Petals. And I started a rose garden at Avena and now it's probably what the rose garden. There's two different rose gardens and they produce now enough rose petals for me to gather all the roses that we need.

Genevieve Morgan:

What does the rose petal elixir do?

Deb Soule:

So roses, whether you make it as a tea or for us, the rose petal is cooling to the body so I use it. I'll help for when women feel agitated and irritated premenstrually or women going through menopause or having some warm flushes or hot flushes. It's a little bit cooling to the body, both physically cooling, so even a fever. But also that emotional heated up ness that anybody can get. It can be very, very helpful there. I also use it for a lot of sadness and grief. When people have had a loss in their life, whether it be someone's died in their family or friends or whatever the loss might be, someone's lost their home or they've had to move, but there's a great loss there. Its roses are very, very. They're very comforting to the heart. So there's been sadness. But I also use it by somebody's getting married or somebody's fallen in love and they're, you know, I will give them the rose petal. It also has a great sense of creating joy and love in the heart.

Genevieve Morgan:

Where can we find your products?

Deb Soule:

On the shelves right here in Portland. Whole Foods carries quite a bit of Avena's line and also Lois's health food store, Natural food store in Scarborough and in Yarmouth, the Royal River Health food store has carried our products for a long time.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thank you, Deb. It's such a joy to see you and to talk with you. I can't wait to come to the open house and tour your new building. Lisa and I will come up this summer.

Deb Soule:

Definitely come. And also to the listeners who want to come, usually every other Wednesday, June, July and August, I give a free herb Walk in the garden so visitors are welcome.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And that's on your website?

Deb Soule:

That's all on our website. All the classes when the herb walks are open and then you know. All of our products are available online for people also.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell us what your website is.

Deb Soule:

It's avenabotanicals.com thank you so much for

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

coming in and visiting with us. Deb.

Deb Soule:

Thank you so much.

Genevieve Morgan:

If you're interested in reading more about debsol, Avena Botanicals or any of the products that can you offer, please visit us online@themainmag.com where you can read a profile of Deb Soule or my article get yout Glow on that appeared in the November December 2011 issue. Pick up the latest issue of Maine Magazine at your local newsstand.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The Bountiful blog that I attempt to write in daily and is available at bountifulpath.com often represents my version of what I do to keep my body beautiful. And this is not beautiful in a superficial way per se. It really is a deep, integral beauty. Part of this is running. This week's Bountiful blog post is about running. This post is called Dark Run. It is from September 15, 2011. Weather does not frighten me, nor does night. Nothing in fact deters me. When I need a run, a run I must have. My run is my meditation. It is my daily pause. It is my reconnection. Last night was my first evening run in many months. I caught the tail end of the sun as it bid farewell to the sky before dipping down below the pines. Darkness emerged in its wake, a rosy glow followed by shadows, then blackness. Crickets sang me home. Typically I am a morning runner and in the summer I am spoiled by early light. As summer fades, the light grows dear. By late autumn I am running in the pre dawn pall. Last night I found myself navigating less by vision than by familiarity with the well worn paths of my hometown. My knowledge of landmarks and a radar like sense got me home, which has in essence been my life of late. Navigated less by what is clearly seen ahead than than by a familiarity with my own strength and ability. I have had to trust that I know where I am going and that I am highly capable of getting there despite finding myself largely in the dark. Some might call this faith. I suspect it is closer to fearlessness. When one has lost much, there is less left to fear, losing less easily. Am I deterred by things once more formidable? Certainly not weather nor darkness. I know I will find my way home by the end of this dark run. Find more blog posts like this@bountifulpath.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This week's Give Back segment features Ann Belden from Hearty Girls, Healthy Women. And I'm excited to hear more about your organization. But first I'd like to hear a little bit about you, Ann. And I've got Genevieve Morgan sitting next to me here in the studio.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi Ann. Welcome.

Anne Belden:

Hi. Well, it's great to be here today and we really appreciate you inviting hardy girls to take part in your radio show. It's great to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I always think of hardy girls almost like Hardy boys. Does anybody ever come up with that?

Genevieve Morgan:

A lot.

Anne Belden:

A lot of people do say that we get the Hardy boy thing, we get the party girls. Is that what you're saying? So people get our name, you know, sometimes mixed up a little bit. But actually the name comes from hearty girls. The part of that comes from a term in health psychology, hardiness, like resilience. Resilience. And so what that really refers to is how does one cope with difficult situations when they're in a stressful situation? How do they work to really shore themselves up and meet that and overcome that, or at least deal with it. And so that's where the Hardy Girls comes from. But we also most of our work is focused on girls, but it certainly ties into women's, women's issues and development as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What types of programs do you offer?

Anne Belden:

Well, we do a lot of different things, but we have different girls groups. We have a younger we work with girls 2nd through 12th grade as well as adults and professionals. I'll talk about that next. But for girls, we have girls adventure groups for younger girls in grade school. And that is really experiences and activities that expose kids to, to non traditional activities, professions that might not ordinarily girls be exposed to. So I don't know, maybe things like, oh, sled dogging, piloting. We had a woman who used to be on our board who was a pilot and so she did a whole girls adventure club around that, mountaineering. So just a lot of really active outdoors and oftentimes non, non traditional activities for girls. So that's our program for younger girls. Then we have Girls Coalition groups which should be for our middle school aged girls. And those are groups that are run by young women, young adult women, typically in college that really teach. It's sort of the core of our program which is to teach girls how to support one another, how to speak out. A really fundamental piece of our Girls Coalition groups is helping them to become social activists. That's really a big important part of everything that we do is based on helping girls to find their voice and to use it to really change the culture around them. And whether that's in just a little teeny way, speaking out in a small way when they see some sort of small, little aggression that's in their world in school that they want to say something about to taking action in their school, going to a school board meeting, getting girls working together to change something in a policy at their school, say. So that's the Girls Coalition groups. Then for our high school girls we have what we call GAB Girls, our Girls Advisory Board. And that's really a leadership program helping girls to giving them an opportunity, a platform to speak out to drive social change and to really understand the power of working collectively and what that can do to affect change.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what is your website?

Anne Belden:

Well, it's Hearty girls, healthy women.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hghw.org and do you have a Facebook page as well?

Anne Belden:

We do have a Facebook page and so there's a lot of different ways to, I mean, working with young girls, we have to really be connected in social media.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and you're collaborating with the Telling Room and Space Gallery really soon. I know that. What are some other events that you're bringing up?

Anne Belden:

Yeah, one of the big things that we have coming up is our Girls Rock weekend. It's not until April, but I want to mention it because actually right now we're accepting nominations from around the state for our Girls Rock Awards. So we give out, I think it's five different awards to girls from all over the state, statewide. And we really want to encourage people from around the state to submit names of girls that have done just really outstanding, amazing things to try and change what the culture is like around them. And so you can submit your nominations to that website to hghw.org we have a whole, I think a whole link on there for Girls Rock Weekend. But our weekend, which is I think in mid April, not only do we have our Girls Rock Awards, but we have a poetry smash up that I think is in Bangor. We have, we'll be having events. The Play that Takes Ovaries we'll be hosting here in Portland.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The play is called that Takes Ovaries as opposed to that takes the male counterpart of Ovaries.

Anne Belden:

We also hosted that last year. It's a great play where girls get up and speak out about their own experiences that they've had. It's a really powerful play. Maybe, I don't know, it might be fun just to highlight one of the girls that won one of our awards last year. Just to kind of give people an example if they're thinking about what might they nominate somebody for. We have several different categories, but Katie Massey was a senior last year at Waterville High School and she won the award. She played on the boys ice hockey team for four years in high school. And it was a real. She had to put up with. While her teammates were very supportive of her being part of the team. I guess she had to put up with a lot of name calling, jeers, sneers from other teams, from parents of other teams. And she really persisted and she knew that that's what she wanted to do and contributed a great deal from that experience to her team. And I would imagine for everybody else, all the other teams around her. So that would be an example of one of our Girls Rock Awards.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So in addition to nominating girls for this award and going to this event and going to the Telling Room event, are there other ways that people in the community can help you out?

Anne Belden:

Yeah, we are always looking for people who might have something that they could contribute to the Girls Adventure groups that they would like to share with our girls. We'd love to hear from you if you could share an experience, an activity, expose our kids to something. We would love that. We have, of course, committees that are really vibrant and active. We have a board. We're always looking for people to get involved that way. Our office is in Waterville though. We are beginning to do programming in Portland and we actually work nationally. But we're starting to do some Portland programming in a number of schools in the Portland area. So if people are interested in getting involved here in Portland in some way, we'd love to talk with you about ways that you might be able to do that also.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. Well, we appreciate your coming in and speaking with us, Ann, about Hardy Girls Healthy Women, and we hope that people who are listening today will go out there and bring this sort of heartiness and healthiness to the females in their lives.

Anne Belden:

Well, thanks so much for having us. And again, we'd just love to hear from anybody who'd like to hear more about us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This week's show was about Body Beautiful. We began in a conversation with Dr. Ed Giacoma to explore the manifestation of beauty within the body itself, the body physical. Although, as we mentioned in Deep Dish with Genevieve Morgan, we do believe that the body is simply an interface between the physical and the spiritual world. We got more into this topic with Deb Sowell of Avena Botanicals who spoke to us about the importance of grounding one, grounding oneself in the external world, grounding oneself in nature and the beauty of nature. And we finished up with Ann Belden of Hardy Girls Healthy Women who spoke of the beauty of knowing oneself as a female in this world, knowing oneself in a way that is perhaps different than the media might have us know ourselves. We believe that the beauty of the body is something that continues to be very important. We will keep talking about it on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast as it is extremely relevant to the notion of health and wellness both personally and globally. Thank you for listening. We welcome your Looking into the Dr. Lisa Practice at drlisabelisle.com Read more about our Bountiful blog at bountifulpath.com subscribe to our E. News like us on Facebook or send us an email. We really do want to know what you think about Body Beautiful and other shows that we've done over the course of the fall. We hope that we continue to beautify your life and we thank you for letting us be a part of your world. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. I hope you have a bountiful life.