Meet Lindsay Kluge, Ellwood Thompson’s Health Coach. She’s got Masters of Science in Herbal Medicine from Maryland University of Integrative Health, and she wants to make sure you’re staying healthy. It’s not an easy job, Richmond was named the second most obese city in the US in 2012.
Meet Lindsay Kluge, Ellwood Thompson’s Health Coach. She’s got Masters of Science in Herbal Medicine from Maryland University of Integrative Health, and she wants to make sure you’re staying healthy. It’s not an easy job, Richmond was named the second most obese city in the US in 2012.
But that wont stop Kulge. You can meet with her at Ellwoods Thursdays between 5-7PM. She sat down with us a few weeks back and gave us the sweet-deets on her background, her gig, and what her favorite herbs are.
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What brought you to Ellwoods to work as a health coach?
Ellwoods offered me the role of health coach after their former health coach moved away. They needed to fill the role. They knew I had a background, and they knew I was a licensed nutritionist and a clinical herbalist and have a masters degree in doing clinical herbal work. So they asked me to fill the role, and I said “SURE, that sounds great.”
My experience as a health coach was non-existent, I was experienced as a clinician. I did two hour long appointments or 1 ½ hour long appointments, so doing the health coach role made me really have to condense my practice style. So What people can expect when they come see a health coach, is a 30 min appointment. It’s pretty brief but they can expect to get a good “jumping off point” if they have a health issue they are quite not sure how to solve
For instance if someone comes in and they have chronic pain, they’ve seen a lot of practitioners, they don’t know what else to do, they’re unfamiliar with supplements they don’t know how to eat.
We can touch on all of that, and we’ve also developed a health team here with other practitioners within the community that we feel really comfortable referring out. I can help people decided what is a good match for them, what practitioner they can see, if they need further nutritional work or if they need custom compounded herbs they can certainly come see me and my business. But its a good place for them to jump off, its a good starting point.
What’s your business?
My business is ginger tonic botanicals
Now explain to me the compounds, cause you mentioned that real quick but I think a lot of people might what to know what that means
I am a custom compounding herbal dispensary, so I work with loose teas, herbal powders and hydro alcoholic herb extracts and I have about 100 of them. So you’ll come and see me in an appointment and we’ll have like a 2 hour long appointment and at the end of that I’ll custom compound an herbal formula for you. For instance if you need something like a sleep formula with valerian, passion flower, california poppy and skull cap. I can put all that together for you rather than have you come some place else that has other herbs in there that you may not need. I really do specific targeted herbs.
What is skullcap?
SkullCap is my favorite herb!
Tell me more about skull cap, its such a cool name.
Skull cap is called an axiolitic, so it helps calm anxiety it also is a muscular skeletal relaxor, so it helps to ease tension in this upper area. So if you hold stress in your shoulders or your neck it can really help to relive that. Its also a mild anti spasmodic, so its great for the lower gastrointestinal tract like if you get any type of IBS symptoms from anxiety. So it makes a really great tea, its one of my favorites.
What, does it come from a certain type of plant?
It comes from the skull cap plant
You just drop that in casual conversation and generally people are gonna be like… skull cap?
[laughs]
It sounds really medieval, and I think thats why people think like “huh herbs, yea you get them from your garden and they don’t work”
They’ve got these funky names but they are really potent medicines too. Skullcap is one of my favorites.
Do you find that people nowadays are starting to become more open about the idea of using herbal supplements, instead of going the route of “Pill” or “Doctor”
I think its really coming up in our society now because, well first of all herbs have been used for thousands of years. There’s literally thousands of years of documented use on particular herbs. Their safety is clear. Herbs are very safe for the most part, there’s always outliers, but now that we have all the modern medical research going on and funding is available, herbs are really starting to become more in the limelight of clinical trials. so people can actually look up legitimate clinical research, which is kind of what they’re used to doing. Like when they wanna know something medical, they’ll go to pubmed.com or something and look for clinical trials. Herbs are now showing up on that so I feel like people trust them more because they’re being “modern day studied” rather than going back to the annals of herbs. I think it’s kind of a trust issue and also more people are being trained in herbal medicine.
Like yourself?
[laughs]Like myself.
We actually have a legitimate accredited degree and this is what we do and this is what we study. We’re trained to communicate with the medical community so I can talk to your doctor and I can understand him/her and they can understand me.
How’s your conversation with doctors? How does that go? Cause I Imagine a lot of new younger doctors have more experience, but what about the older doctors?
Its a toss up. Virginia in particular is a very medically conservative state. Some are extremely open and are more than happy to have their patients also work with me. I like to keep communication completely open. There are some others that really scare their patients into thinking herbs are unsafe, they aren’t meant for you and they’re gonna interact with “this that and the other.” herbs do have interactions which is why its important to work with someone that knows what they’re doing. My main goal is to educate patients as much as possible and give them as much legitimate, credible information as I can for them to make their own decision. So I can only facilitate and tell them as best to my knowledge how it will work and the safety and the efficacy and the dosage. And then its really up to them if they take it, I just like people to have the information.
Do you find that, most people, once they get the information, tend to come back to it and really enjoy it, and kind get something out of it they didn’t know they were gonna get before
Herbs can really be your allies. Like people, all herbs are so different and so unique and they’ve got this thousands of constituents within them that work with all of our organ systems. When something can be custom compounded for exactly what you need, its amazing how quick the results can occur. Theres a relationship people can actually develop with their medicine. It has a taste and it has a flavor and it has a fragrance and they can create it and they can make it. Where as taking a pill, you lose a lot of that. They’re kind of taking this nameless thing that does it’s job really well, pharmaceuticals are designed to do specific things but they neglect other body systems and that’s where side effects can come into play
This kind of loses its connection to earth, in a lot of ways, it loses its connection to what’s already available to us, just with the knowledge and the knowledge needs to get there. We all talk about it, we all talk about the idea of taking a pill for your problems as opposed to putting a little more work into learning about other possibilities. People wanna microwave their dinner, and not necessarily go take time to fix their dinner.
Yea, and its been hard to sometimes communicate that with people because so many people come or find me and ask: “what should I take for arthritis?“ It doesn’t really work that way, herbs weren’t created for your issues. Herbs can support you in particular dosages and formulas to help you with arthritis for sure but theres no one herb.
Theres no cure all
Theres no cure all, theres no one herb made for arthritis, theres a drug made for arthritis but herbs don’t work that way. So ill be happy to talk to you about it and put something together for you. But its hard to communicate that sometimes,
I’d imagine id be hard to communicate that, most the people want the quick fix.
Most people are used to the quick fix, but in the end when they take time, like several weeks or a couple of months to really get a therapeutic use of their botanical medicine, or food as medicine. They have a much more holistic sustainable approach to healing.
Its interesting to have the job that you do and work the way you do with food and with Ellwoods and with your own business. More and more people are becoming aware, you see more farmers markets doing things and you see people getting more interested in their local grass fed and their own local markets and going away from the general forced, and they know they;re other options out there. so its pretty cool to be able to have someone to kind of assist you in that manner.
Theres a lot of food out there and Theres a lot of food that isnt really food. A kind of crossover is happening. So having someone being able to answer questions like “where doe that word come from? and what’s in that?” To me its obvious, but to most people its not. So its nice to talk to people about how to eat well for them. Im not trying to have riots in the streets and waving flags. [laughs] We all have an approach and i wanna do something that helps people find foods that are perfect for them. and thats taking into account your energetic. liked do you run hot, cold, moist, dry, damp. Like if you run really cold, probably not gonna recommend eating a lot of raw foods because energetically raw foods are very cool. I try to help people from a more ayurvedic medicine standpoint, how to find good foods for them.
More personal to the person?
More personal to the person, Yes. So when people come to me and they’re like “I wanna do a paleo-diet!” I’m like, “well lets talk about the paleo-diet, what part of that is gonna work for you and what part might we need to make adjustments to. So I like to see what their goals are what their lifestyle is like and then get a sense for their constitution, their energetic. You can make adjustments to an already made diet or you and I could create a health plan together.
Now, for people coming here to meet you at Ellwoods in particular, is setting up an appointment with you free?
Yea! They send me an email at healthcoach@ellwoodthompsons.com and on Thursday nights from 5 to 7, im here and we set up appointments so we get 30 min appointment times. Its simple as that. Just come in and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about and if you need further support I can refer you out, or you can come back to my business and do further nutrition. Its a great place to start and its free! Which is great. The people did that. The people support Ellwoods and Ellwoods supports me and I give it back to the people that come to Ellwoods.
