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Are you considering CBD? I’m so excited to finally find a CBD company I’m willing and want to talk about – Mett Naturals. Mett Naturals sustainably grows and harvests hemp to ensure the highest quality products in the industry. After doing So. Much. Research in the CBD world, I can attest they are the best!

I had the pleasure of talking to one of their founders, Scott Schwab, on the podcast this week. We first talked about what the heck CBD is because even I was confused by it at first! Scott shared the origins of Mett Naturals and how they differentiate themselves from others in the industry. I rant about supplement culture (because why not?) We chat about the benefits of CBD, CBD vs. THC, and so much more.

This is a jam-packed episode, and I can’t wait for you to dive in!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What is CBD?

• The Mett Naturals story

• Lack of regulation around supplements

• Benefits of CBD

• CBD vs. THC

• The Mett Naturals way

What is CBD?

CBD stands for Cannabidiol, which is a compound or a chemical from the plant that naturally grows within the hemp plant. It’s also in marijuana and hemp plants, but these two plants have been genetically different for 2,000 years. When we’re talking about CBD, it’s a compound found in medicinal plants that helps in a variety of different ways, not the kind of THC compounds that make you feel high.

The Origins of Mett Naturals

As I was considering CBD, I researched a lot of CBD companies and they are all pretty much doing the same thing. They aren’t growing their plants in good soil quality soil, even the organic companies are using some form of pesticides, they aren’t hanging their hemp out to dry to keep it from molding and they are using solvents to extract the CBD. While CBD has some amazing qualities, if it’s a poor quality plant, grown in poor quality soil and it’s contaminated with pesticides, mold and solvents… then it can potentially do you more harm than good.

But after living with a life altering medical condition at a young age, co-founder, Scott, had a personal reason to create a CBD company that is doing it differently. Here’s Scott’s story in his own words…

“When I was fifteen, I was paralyzed. My paralysis came from something called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is an ascending paralysis that attacks the nervous system, but it specifically damages the myelin sheath. When you don’t have myelin sheath, which is the protective coating around your nerves, your nerves start to die.

So, at 15 years old, I was experiencing this weird spaghetti-like feeling in my hands and my legs. I went to the hospital, and they were trying to identify what it was night after night. It just kept getting worse and worse, and it was a scary time. I left the hospital in leg braces and a wheelchair. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t button up my pants, I couldn’t button my shirt… There are so many things, from a healthy 15-year-old boy who’s playing football to coming out of the hospital and being in a wheelchair, it was very different. I was in my leg braces for a year, but my nerves were able to grow back through work with my neurologist and my dad, who is a physical therapist.

Fast forward to just about four years ago, I was getting so much intense pain that I didn’t understand where it was coming from. We started looking into it, and it was neuropathy. In talking to doctors and neurologists, we found out my myelin sheath and nervous system had so much trauma that now, as an adult, they’ve just kind of had their way with my health. They’re damaged, and there’s some trauma there.

I had to start looking for some pain management, and a lot of pain management that was suggested was a synthetic pathway through pills. The pain was the thing that I was trying to manage first, but I also wanted to function and be active. That’s when I started looking into CBD. My first response was like, ‘No way. I’ve never smoked weed. This isn’t for me. This isn’t my pathway.’ But as I looked more into the therapeutic benefits and specifically how it attaches to receptors and treats the receptors from a pain perspective, I became very bought in. I started using a variety of brands but found they were so inconsistent. Some worked, and some didn’t even within the same brand. There was just so much variety that I decided to change it. That’s the moment I called up my buddy, we started researching CBD, and here we are.”

I find when people own companies and they’re passionate as Scott, we get the best quality and standard products because they believe in it so much. It’s personal to them, and I love that!

Supplement Culture

I’ve always had an issue with the lack of regulation around supplements. I’m not somebody who typically tells people to take supplements. I’m not a big supplement taker myself in general. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I believe in a healthy lifestyle, whole foods, and getting nutrients and vitamins from food. But we have this culture in America where there are shelves and aisles everywhere of supplements. They’re being sold everywhere!

Multiple investigations have been done on supplements. The one I want to talk about was about herbal supplements being sold in places like Walgreens, CVS, and GNC. The New York attorney general investigated a variety of herbal supplements being sold in all those places. What they found was only 21% of all of the supplements and the herbal supplements tested actually had in them what they claimed. So, 79% of what they tested was completely fake.

Another investigation was done for supplements sold on Amazon. They took a look at the most popular immune-boosting wellness products being sold on Amazon and found that less than half actually contained what was on the product label.

Unfortunately, Scott shares similar claims that are being made in the CBD industry, and it might even be more heightened. In 2018, the farm bill passed, and everybody rushed into it. Everybody had a brand or a manufacturer. It was the gold rush. Mett Naturals noticed the quality immediately dropped.

People are taking CBD to make their health better and not realizing that what they’re taking could be completely fake and have very little CBD. It could have mold or solvents, and it could be making their issue worse. CBD is great, but it can be hard to trust.

Benefits of CBD

If you’re considering CBD, think about the benefits. CBD works with your receptors, which is why it’s effective at managing pain. We have an endocannabinoid system (ECS) centrally present within our body. The endocannabinoid system is central to your wellness/Holistic balance. Every function in the body comes back to what our ECS has in storage. If we’re depleted, we could see symptoms like:

• Stress

• Anxiety

• Difficulty sleeping

• Trouble regulating pain

Cytokine Inflammation

There’s some awesome research on cytokine inflammation. When I think of it, I think about when somebody gets sick, cytokine comes in and acts as the body’s immune response. During COVID, Scott heard a lot about this on the news. Experts theorized the reason people were getting so sick was because of a huge storm of Cytokine.

It’s a development of a system within your body and it’s a cell division process or a cytokinesis. The division or growth of the Cytokines determines how your body can function and what it’s communicating. Cytokines are these little messengers, and they’re protein-based. When we have a sickness coming on, it’s the cytokine storm that comes on. Those proteins become inflamed, and they become unable to function at a cellular level.

During COVID, people had the challenge of processing normal breath or the ability to get out of bed. Cytokines are core to your cellular health, and they start in your respiratory system. Cytokinesis is just the division of those cells and the multiplying of those cells, whether they be healthy cells or unhealthy cells. Inflammation is a huge part of what it does.

A study out of Oregon State University found CBD helps with that inflammation. CBG and CBD are effective at blocking the protein spike caused by the cytokine storm that attaches to our cells. For the first time, a university is looking at what’s happening in the respiratory system and giving us a pathway of how we can avoid the common cold, flu, and bronchial issues. It’s all inflammatory-based.

If we’re consistently taking CBD (Scott recommends CBG), then we have true immunity. Many companies will say it has elderberries in it, and elderberries are phenomenal. But getting CBD into a body’s system can cut back and even eliminate inflammation in the chest.

Benefits to the Average Person

You can replace all of your NSAIDs and many of your synthetic types of medicines with CBD. CBD is a great thing for the whole body. If you get it into your body and your endocannabinoid system is healthy and full, you’ll notice less stress, pain, and inflammation.

You might even notice your circadian rhythm will get back on track, and you’ll start having great sleep. CBD isn’t necessarily the compound for sleep; it’s most associated with depth of sleep (REM sleep). CBD will put you in a relaxed state, and CBN will take you the rest of the way and give you that depth of sleep.

Topical use is very effective for headaches. Mett Natural’s most successful product for migraines and headaches is a roll-on that you put across your temples, and down your neck, and within 20 to 30 minutes, you’re going to have headache relief. The blend with frankincense and other herbs allows your body to be at rest or homeostasis.

CBD vs. THC

You cannot get high from CBD. Both the marijuana and hemp plants have a lot of functions or capabilities. Scott uses a metaphor to help explain the compounds:

“Think of it in terms of a basketball team. You have five players on the court. One player is CBD, and one is THC. They play well as a team. CBD is the compound that brings a person down off of their high. THC is psychoactive, and at a specific level, you will get high.”

Mett Naturals products and anything under the farm bill will never get you to the point of feeling high. However, they’ve learned that the sensitivity of specific compounds for people is a little bit more pronounced. Some people feel the sensation of being high more than others. From a level of how much CBD versus THC is in the product, Mett Naturals has so much CBD in their products that the THC levels are very low. But there are products with very high levels of THC and lower levels of CBD, and it can bring you down.

There are some medicinal benefits of higher THC:

• Appetite restoration for anybody who’s going through cancer

• Blocking pain receptors

In Scott’s research, it’s utilized very well with certain scenarios, symptoms, or root causes.

When people are trying to manage pain, some level of THC is more effective because THC and CBD work well together. The body is going to utilize every nutrient it takes in. In Scott’s opinion, everybody needs the full spectrum because the body will utilize it in different ways to help you have homeostasis. We’re all searching for that happiness, that ability to just have everything calm.

The Mett Naturals Way

Mett Naturals chose a seed-to-shelf approach because they could visit farms and see how the hemp was being handled. Many times, farms were stacking all of their hemp in bundles or just in a pile. That’s a mold issue waiting to happen!

So, they set out to make sure the farming is done right. They visited manufacturers and extractors, and it was HIGHLY disappointing. Scott says they were the most disgusting facilities he has ever seen. He wouldn’t even be surprised if they had rat issues Many companies have no control over the seeds they use; they’re buying from facilities like this because they don’t have a way to grow hemp on their own.

That was when they knew they had to own and control the whole process, and they had to be transparent about it. They wanted to open it up to the general public who wanted to come and be educated either by the extractor, the manufacturer, or us, the farmer.

Additionally, Utah does a yearly inspection of all facilities. The state removed 1,400 products off of the registry just this year alone, and they’ll probably continue to remove more because Utah has stepped up its testing to the point where you need to have multiple independent and third-party tests and they have to agree with each other. Scott applauds what Utah is doing but believes it needs to be done federally. There are too many brands that are bad players in the industry.

Mett Naturals wants its products to be attainable for everyone. Explore their CBD bestsellers and use code WENDYKATHRYN for 10% off!

I strongly believe there are so many people out there taking pain medication all the time because they’re in pain. They are stressed out to the absolute max, and they can’t get sleep. People are fighting autoimmune diseases. There are so many issues people are fighting right now, and I think CBD is such an important tool for them to have access to. I hope this episode helped you as you’re considering CBD!

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