Partners in Wellness: Interview with Cristina Ciccone from Gaia

Gaia Herbs is one of our top herbal supplements suppliers - and we've worked with them for decades. They manufacture high quality liquid tinctures and liquid phytocaps as well as dried herb extract capsules. Much of the raw material comes from their amazingly gorgeous organic farm in Brevard, NC - as well as organic farms in Italy and Costa Rica. Their "Meet Your Herbs" platform puts transparency right at your finger tips - just use the QR code on the bottle to discover exactly where and how the extracted herbs in your bottle were grown and processed.

Cristina Ciccone, our Gaia representative, is one of our favorite reps to work with! She is incredibly dedicated to her work and a self proclaimed "herbal nerd" - we've come to her with many complex questions about herbal medicine over the years and she always responds with a thoughtful, detailed answer. In honor of Partners in Wellness week, we've asked Cristina to answer a few questions about her work with Gaia:

Partners in Wellness: Reliance Vitamins

For our Partners In Wellness Week we are going to be publishing some short interviews and vendor profiles to give more insight into our vendors - because it’s not just what we carry that’s important to us, it’s who we carry as well.  We use three top manufacturers for our Cambridge Naturals brand supplements: Reliance, Vitality Works, and Vitamer Labs.  All three offer the highest quality sourcing and manufacturing and each one offers something unique for us and our customers.  The first in our series of profiles is Reliance, written by Zach, our supplements manager.

Passionflower: Passiflora incarnata

By Steph Zabel
Herbalist, Ethnobotanist and Educator

There may not be an herb as striking and gorgeous as passionflower. Its circular, whirling, complex blossom is breathtaking. And although it seems to be an exotic species that comes from a far off place, it is a plant that is native to the southeastern part of our country.

Growing up in South Carolina I have vivid memories of passionflower vines from my childhood. My grandparents grew them outside of their home, and we also found them growing wild along the edges of the streets where we walked. My cousins and I would stop and exclaim if we found a passionflower in bloom. It always seemed like a little piece of magic that we stumbled upon at those times — something intensely beautiful and mysterious that stood out like a spark in the landscape.

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Not Just Skin Deep: Interview with True Moringa's Emily Cunningham & Kwami Williams

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We first saw Moringa Connect at Natural Products Expo East, a little over a year and a half ago. Co-Founder Emily Cunningham enticed us over to talk with her beautifully packaged, golden moringa oil, and we were hooked by the efficacy of the product and the story behind the brand. We're relaunching our Not Just Skin Deep blog series with an interview with Emily. Read about their amazing story, after the jump!

THYME: Thymus vulgaris Lamiaceae

By Steph Zabel
Herbalist, Ethnobotanist and Educator

Pungent, aromatic thyme is one of those plants that we all know — and have eaten in one dish or another — but tend to forget about when it comes to herbal uses. It is similar in some regards to sage in that it is an important culinary herb, used for centuries by the home cook. However, there is much more to thyme than meets the eye…

Beautiful Burdock Root: Arctium lappa

By Steph Zabel
Herbalist, Ethnobotanist and Educator

Burdock is a beautiful, large-leafed plant that pops up in areas where humans live. You’ve seen it growing around Cambridge and Somerville — I’m certain of it!

Burdock is generally called a “weed” since it likes to grow in places where it was not planted. Often overlooked, it is actually quite a lovely plant, when you take the time to admire it. The bright magenta flowers could easily be mistaken for a kind of thistle, and burdock is, in fact, closely related to thistles. The flowers are covered with prickly burrs, which interestingly were the inspiration behind the invention of Velcro! Get close to some of these clingy flowers and seed heads and you will see what I mean…

The perfect card for the one you love!

Valentine's Day doesn't have to be about Hallmark! Good Paper Cards is a wonderful company with a mission to restore the humanity and beauty within each of us that gets so easily forgotten and tossed aside. They start with their cardmakers - women who have escaped sex trafficking in the Philippines and young adults orphaned by disease in Rwanda.

For her February Staff Pick, Grace chose three delightful handmade cards from Good Paper Cards with the theme of love. Read about her choices below!

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera Solanaceae): The Strength of a Horse

By Steph Zabel
Herbalist, Ethnobotanist and Educator

Ashwagandha is a wonderful plant that comes to us from the Ayurvedic tradition. It is known as an herb that helps to improve one's resiliency, cope with stress, and reestablish healthy sleep patterns. It is a calming and nutritive herb that has been used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic medicine and is considered to be an important rejuvenative and tonic remedy.

Also called Winter Cherry, it is a cultivated plant of Indian origin. The roots are the prized part used in herbal preparations, and after just one growing season they can be harvested. Commonly ashwagandha roots are found in powdered form.

RegActiv Probiotics: Immune, Heart and Liver Wellness through Antioxidant Support

By Miles Sarill
Supplements Buyer and M.S. Candidate - Experimental Medicine

In the last thirty years, the market for probiotics has evolved and grown greatly. No longer is the sole capsule of Lactobacillus acidophilus the only option; rather, the aisles are populated with a multitude of products each touting “more than 10 bacterial strains” with anywhere between 5 and 150 billion cells per capsule. This boom in the probiotic market is partially fueled by both consumer interest as well as novel research into the microbiome.

It is increasingly understood that our microbiome, our individual collection of bacterial strains, plays a tremendous role in our health at many levels. Although probiotic supplements are often marketed toward balancing good digestive health, novel research indicates a role for a strong gut flora in maintaining healthy immune, skin, lung, and brain health. There are thousands of scientific articles on the effects of probiotic supplementation; although many of these publications center on animal studies, there are an increasing number of human clinical trials.