How To Heal Bladder Pain Syndrome and Interstitial Cystitis with Top Quality Aloe as Part of the Protocol with Heather Florio, CEO of Desert Harvest

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:00:03) – Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi, and welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond, founder and CEO of the Integrative Women’s Health Institute, where we educate health and wellness practitioners in functional nutrition and health coaching for women’s and pelvic health. Plus, we help support clients who are transitioning through perimenopause and menopause with chronic challenges like endometriosis, post-viral syndromes, autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:01:32) – And today, we are going to be talking about interstitial cystitis and painful bladder syndrome, or bladder pain syndrome with Heather Florio of Desert Harvest. So in our practice, we take a very multidisciplinary, very integrative perspective on helping women with bladder pain heal from the root cause, looking at all the symptoms the neurologic system, the immune system, the digestive system, the bladder bladder lining the microbiome in and around the bladder, the vulvar vaginal microbiome, the gut microbiome, the pelvic floor, the myofascial of the pelvis and hip, and the entire lower quarter. The entire body. Really, you can’t take the pelvis out of the body. And Heather and her company, Desert Harvest, have for 30 years been on the cutting edge of using aloe vera and other natural products. We get into many of them in this episode, and they have the data to support the efficacy and the safety of their products. So in this episode, we’re going to learn about that. But we’re also going to learn about how as practitioners and as consumers, we need to be really detectives around the supplemental Products agency companies and how to really find out if the products we’re recommending to our clients are of good quality, good brands, good efficacy, you know, of a high value for the cost.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:03:08) – And it’s not that easy. We have to do a bit of detective work because it’s not as simple as, you know, sort of them checking off the basic guidelines of FDA oversight. And you’ll learn exactly why in this episode, and you’ll learn a lot about the benefits of particular natural products that could be as effective, if not more effective, as pharmaceutical medications that have been shown to increase risk of things like blindness. So this is a very important episode. If you recommend supplements at all in your practice. And if you work with women with pelvic pain, especially bladder pain, or you’re experiencing that yourself. So let’s dive in and meet Heather and I’ll see you on the other side, where we’ll talk about some of the key nuggets that you’re going to learn in this episode. See you there. All right. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m here with Heather Florio from Desert Harvest. So hi Heather. How are you today? I’m good.

Heather Florio (00:04:23) – How about yourself?

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:04:25) – Great. Thank you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:04:26) – So let’s talk about what inspired you to start Desert Harvest. Where did this all begin? And then I want to talk about what you guys are up to now.

Heather Florio (00:04:37) – Oh yeah definitely. So long story here, but I’ll make a kind of short. Desert harvest started 1993. It was actually started by my mother. My mother’s sister had interstitial cystitis. And you can imagine it’s still not great today how bad it was in the 90s for diagnosis, even to recognize that it was a disease. And so as a result, you know, she was seeking relief from anything that she could try. She was very into natural products. And her and my mom would go to natural products conferences and pick up anything that they thought could have some level of pain relief and help with the symptoms. And they picked up some random bottle of aloe vera to help Natural Products Conference in Sedona, Arizona. And she took the whole bottle in one night. Probably not the safest thing to do considering the and quinones and aloe vera.

Heather Florio (00:05:32) – We’ll get to that later. But she took the whole bottle, but she slept through the night and it was like, wait a second, there might be something here. And so my mother actually got with one of her chemist friends and figured out how we could concentrate this, how we could maximize nutrient content while making it safe for long term use, and so developed the formulation of the super strength aloe vera that we still use today.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:05:58) – Wow. That’s great. So coming from a functional nutrition perspective, obviously I’m a strong proponent of using aloe for many things around like bladder lining and even gut health, but there are some risks to it. Can you talk about that a bit?

Heather Florio (00:06:16) – Yes, definitely. So aloe vera I mean it has over 200 nutrients and it’s 75 of them active nutrients. And so for us, if you open up an aloe leaf and you look inside, you’ve got the gel. And then below that you’ve got a slimy thin yellow layer down by the rind of the leaf. And that is what’s called anthro quinones.

Heather Florio (00:06:38) – And those are latex chemicals naturally. And aloe vera and long term, they’ve been proven in research to be carcinogenic to the colon, liver damage, kidney damage. And so they’re not safe for long term use. And the FDA allows ten parts per million of anther quinones in aloe vera at a safety level. Once the carcinogenic study came out, they still allow a certain amount on aloe vera. At the times, you’ll see words like digestive aid on capsules and juices and things like that. That is a good key indicator that that has an quinones in it, because that is the only digestive really component of aloe vera, and it’s meant to be used in short term bursts, almost like if you’re talking like Asos, you wouldn’t want to take Asos forever as jean and like, you know, because it would damage the kidney. Same kind of thing. This is just meant to be a short term burst, to kind of help get the bowels moving and kind of help your digestive health.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:07:42) – Right. Like a temporary constipation support.

Heather Florio (00:07:45) – Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Something very temporary. And that is what historically aloe vera has been used for internally. And actually, interestingly enough, many times what happens is in Asian countries, they actually take a little shot of it with everything in it once a day. But it’s such a small, tiny amount. It keeps their digestive system regular, but then they also maintain the nutrients, because aloe vera is also high in fiber. And so a lot of the times when you’re first starting this, especially if you’re nutritionally deficient, you might even with the desert harvest aloe vera, part of our patented process, removes all of the insoluble fiber, so we make it easy to digest. But we leave. There’s trace amounts of the soluble fiber in there a little bit. And so many times people, when they first start the aloe vera, you know, it’s kind of flushing things out. And they’re like, you sure this doesn’t have the answer? Quinones in it? The answer is no. We test every single batch of for anthro quinoa content to show that it doesn’t have any.

Heather Florio (00:08:50) – And we actually start with we use the whole leaf. So many times a lot of the products that you’ll see, they say things the standard, you know, digestive aid. You’ll see things like you might see whole leaf and that means they process the. Quinones everything. And then some might be claiming to be an quinone free. That’s a inner leaf gel. And so what that means is once you take and open up a leaf and they slice the gel out just above the anther quinones, so that technically gets them below the ten parts per million of anther quinones. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anther quinone free.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:09:32) – Okay. Yeah. And that’s I think, a really important point to make. We haven’t talked a lot on this podcast yet about the challenges with natural products in terms of quality, which is one of the reasons why I’m often recommending brands, but either been very well established where I’ve actually met the people running the companies, such as you and your colleagues, or have some kind of voluntary FDA oversight.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:10:01) – And in your case, you’re starting to take it to the next level. Now, where you actually are looking to get FDA approval on a similar level of the same level, really, as El Marron, which is the only other medication approved for interstitial cystitis. Can you talk about the process of that nightmare?

Heather Florio (00:10:25) – No. Yes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:10:26) – I’m sure, I’m sure.

Heather Florio (00:10:28) – Yeah. So Desert Harvest has always been highly committed to research. We did our first double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial in 1995 with interstitial cystitis patients, and we had an 87.5% response rate of summer complete relief of all symptoms. With that, we followed it up with research. Over the years, we did for an NIH grant funding project. We actually did a questionnaire. So little room for bias there. Definitely. And we did that with the Interstitial Cystitis Association. They sent it out to all their audience. We had 660 respondents and a 92% response rate in that subgroup. And then we just finished a study in Italy that is going to be published here within the next month or so.

Heather Florio (00:11:17) – And we’re really excited to introduce those results because similar very great results. We actually took the worst of the worst Ick patients. So one of the things that’s different in Europe than the US is we really treat interstitial cystitis as a diagnosis of exclusion. And here we treat it in Europe they require cystoscopy. There has to be true bladder wall impact of some sort visual evidence before you’re diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. So in our Italian study, they actually took the worst of the worst of the ick patients that have responded to nothing. And almost every one of them responded in the study, and even the placebo group that got the super strength. Olivera afterwards also responded afterwards. So we’re really excited to introduce those results from that clinical trial. But what we’re doing right now is at the same time that we applied to do the Italian study, mind you, this was like 2019.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:12:15) – Yeah. Everything takes a long time in this process.

Heather Florio (00:12:19) – Yes. We are doing a same trial with Wake Forest University here in the United States.

Heather Florio (00:12:26) – We were hoping originally to do a very large population of interstitial cystitis patients. But then the FDA decided that they wanted us to become a drug. And so as a result, we had to pare down the sizing of this study and increase the testing even further than we’ve ever done beyond we normally do thyroid, liver function, CBC panels, things like that. But this we’re looking to go even further. So we’re going to really study and really understand the mechanism of action we’ve always theorized. So you mentioned Elmira. And we know that it uses a chemical synthetic to kind of create a gag layer in the bladder. Aloe vera naturally has high amounts of glucose amino glycans. And so as a result, we have always theorized that it is creating a coating of the bladder and having the mechanism of action of the anti-inflammatory, the analgesic action. It has antifungals and antibacterials. It even has demons in it. Aloe to us, you know, so we’ve always theorized and then, you know, theoretically, when things are passing through the bladder now, they’re not going to irritate because you’ve got this coating.

Heather Florio (00:13:38) – But we actually are going to go a step further this time with this study. And after we kind of finished the first part, we’re hoping to actually at the regenerative medicine department at Wake Forest with Doctor Robert Evans, we’re actually going to be able to watch in lifetime how the aloe vera interacts with the urothelial cell layer of the bladder, because they have a new thing where they can actually extract cells. Latter urothelial cells and keep them alive, and actually watch how the aloe vera interacts with those cells. So we’re actually going to get definitive proof of how it’s interacting with the lining of the bladder.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:14:17) – That’s really interesting and I think very encouraging, because one of the challenges that we all have clinically with managing painful bladder syndrome is that there are these various root cause drivers of the actual symptoms, the pain. So to back up for just a minute, interstitial cystitis is a condition that, as you were mentioning, is classically diagnosed by cystoscopy, where an imaging is done inside of the bladder to see if there’s actually any little like pockets, holes, irritation in that bladder lining, which in the US, you know, sometimes that is done.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:14:58) – You know, it’s somewhat great to hear they’re doing it in Europe, except that it’s a very painful procedure to have to go through, which is why a diagnosis of exclusion also makes sense, because essentially, if there are no other drivers they can find, like a chronic infection or things like that, then this kind of bladder pain, chronic nocturnal area. So when you said your aunt was able to sleep through the night for the first time and forever, that I’m sure was a big relief. You know, other kinds of incontinence. But it’s really just that constant urge incontinence, urinary frequency. And then, you know, a lot of pain in the region of the bladder and pelvic floor dysfunction, pelvic floor tension, because the bladder and the pelvic floor will sort of neurologically speak with each other. Also irritated by constipation and other things that can amplify the condition. So mechanistically, it’s really great that we’ll have this kind of data to be able to see what the Allo is truly doing, but I would say that having it improve the lining of the bladder from a gag layer perspective, that mucosal layer is really a nice thing to image to even kind of imagine for a woman healing from a nervous system standpoint, but also if it’s antifungal, if it’s antibacterial, I think we’re seeing more and more research coming out and just clinical pearls around women who have these conditions having essentially micro infections that are harder to see in some of our traditional infection testing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:16:38) – Are you hearing about that?

Heather Florio (00:16:40) – There has been posited theories. It started with a doctor in the UK, actually, and there have been posited theories of embedded infections. Research thus far hasn’t really proven that to be viable. Although there are many people that go down this path, there’s many people that have gone to the UK from the US to see he actually passed during the pandemic. And so as a result, I’m not sure who’s kind of taking over things there, but there is definitely a positive theory that hasn’t fully been clinically proven. The the hope is and this kind of goes into the problem of the diagnosis of exclusion. And you know, you mentioned the the cystoscopy. It’s very painful. It is. And it usually leads to a flare that lasts for an extended period of time for an interstitial cystitis patient. And so they wanted to get away from it more and more and more in the United States. And that’s why they lean towards this diagnosis of exclusion. But unfortunately, what’s happened as a result of that is we’ve kind of got a lot of misdiagnosis as a result.

Heather Florio (00:17:50) – And so really, you had mentioned bladder pain syndrome before earlier. So that is really a moniker that has really gone to describe. So interstitial cystitis is really describing people who have true bladder wall impact hunters, ulcers, you know, in their bladder and bladder syndrome or bladder pain syndrome that has really come to be known as kind of a complexity of maybe might be other things they’ve been trying to subtype for ever. And unfortunately, there’s been posited theories of subtyping. But clinically, again, nobody’s been able to clinically prove that. However, there was Doctor Lenora Ackerman at UCLA urology department. She actually it was 2021, I think, and she actually created AI machine learning, took all of her patients, put all of their data into this analysis based on these questionnaires. And interestingly enough, she was actually able to find statistical evidence of three distinct groups. True, like it was coming from the bladder, the pain that everything was coming from the bladder. There was myofascial pain. So pelvic floor and 88% of those resolved with pelvic floor physical therapy.

Heather Florio (00:19:17) – And then you had this one isn’t a distinct, but it’s kind of like a neuralgia type. Category was the third category, and there was very little overlap in those categories. So right now, yeah, they’re trying to apply this on a broader basis now. And so far as I’ve heard, the evidence is starting to hold up that this could potentially lead to subtyping out people that might just have pelvic floor dysfunction, that might feel that the urgency and the frequency and the pain is all coming from their bladder, because they’re getting the urgency. They’re feeling like they have to go all the time, but it’s not truly coming from their bladder. It’s coming from their pelvic floor and or neuralgia, you know, other like chronic pain. You had a car accident, you had a back injury. And you know, you’re feeling it come down through your sciatica and you’re thinking that that pain is concentrated in your bladder because, again, you’re getting that kind of feeling of frequency and urgency and pain, but it’s not coming necessarily from there.

Heather Florio (00:20:25) – So it’ll be really interesting to see how that all kind of plays out, because that’s really what’s needed to really help research come along. In regards to are there other types of infections? Are there, you know, the microscopic infections? Can they prove that, you know, things like that? So far, there’s so little that’s been able to be proven just as a result of a lot of misdiagnosis in that patient population?

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:20:57) – Yeah. And I think what’s challenging too is that so it’s interesting that they sort of found three distinct groups. So again, from that sort of functional nutrition standpoint, we’re looking at multiple systems at the same time. Right. So in some cases you’ve got a fairly clear hunter’s ulcer you know bladder lining issue. But if that goes on for too long then you could develop secondary pelvic floor or myofascial issues. You could develop I wouldn’t even call it infection. But like dysbiosis of the area, you know, kind of mild chronic yeast overgrowth, mild chronic dysbiosis of either the bladder or the vulvar vaginal canal, which could be related, again, kind of myofascial or local neurologically.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:21:47) – And even the gut microbiome because of digestion, is not optimized. Then you could have that pressure on the bladder. So I think probably the 20% of patients that come through our clinics and, you know, my colleagues that work in this sort of intersection between pelvic floor and functional nutrition, functional medicine is the people that are crossing across those three categories, because there’s not sort of one straightforward strategy. But the good news is that I think aloe is a really valuable tool for any of them because of that pain relief strategy, without irritating and making worse, actually potentially improving the gut microbiome and the digestive system function. So I can’t see a time. And I mean, certainly I would love your thoughts, but I can’t see a situation where adding aloe is going to be problematic.

Heather Florio (00:22:44) – No, not really, because we have made it safe for long term use in high doses other than an initial kind of. Some people can have that digestive upset because, you know, as you mentioned, many of these patients are very nutritionally deficient because there’s been patients.

Heather Florio (00:23:01) – I only eat white food. It’s like they’re so worried about eating that they become so nutritionally deficient. And so as a result, you’re putting a high nutrition product from the onset in your body. And so a couple of things can happen. You can get stomach or digestive upset and you can get kind of like a detox effect, like kind of just flushing things out. Kind of feeling cruddy might mimic the symptoms of your condition. Other things like that kind of feeling like a flare. But once that happens within the first 1 or 2 weeks, we have had no reported side effects in over 30 years.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:23:42) – Oh wow. That’s really, really encouraging because that is one of the challenges with nutrient supplements is even the detox reactions. We have to go really slow. People need to prepare that. That could happen. Otherwise they get more fearful. And I think the point that you brought up about the nutritional protocols, I think one of the you know, I hate to say this, like I’m glad anyone’s doing any research, but the worst studies we had was that sort of like icy diet.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:24:09) – It just has caused this deep and immense sensation of fear around eating that. Really restricts people from anything. You know, I’ve had clients say to me like, oh, well, I put a blueberry in my mouth and then my bladder started hurting. Well, that’s not a blueberry problem. That’s a nervous system reactivity problem. Yeah. And it’s not to say this is all in your head, but it is to say for sure that most of the time adding beneficial nourishment and maybe very gently, slowly reducing 1 or 2 things at the most I’ve ever found 3 to 5 foods being problematic for someone you know. If you’ve restricted more than five foods from your food plan, that’s a problem and is actually probably making your situation worse because of that nutritional deficiency situation.

Heather Florio (00:25:06) – Oh yeah, major big time. I mean, over the past 30 plus years, I mean, we have heard it all in regards to diet. And we very much recommend, just like adding a supplement, there are other things that we have in our toolbox.

Heather Florio (00:25:20) – If the aloe isn’t just enough, we have quercetin, which is, you know, a natural flavonoid that’s great for that kind of histamine mast cell activation component of that. Not all, but some IC patients have, you know, we have a variety of different things, but we don’t recommend trying all of that at once, like start with one thing at a time. So same thing with diet. Start with one thing at a time. Test out foods for a week and we say a good week because that’s really going to be the time to really listen and understand to your body and not necessarily have, you know, more of a mental response that kind of goes, oh, I don’t know, versus a more of a placebo response versus a true response to that as a trigger to that food. And so, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:26:11) – And I’ve even found that adding things first, or starting with the things that we know are very nourishing for the gut in the bladder, things like broths and cooked vegetables, you know, because some people can’t tolerate the raw if they’re dealing with Sibo or other dysbiosis, they have bloating or, you know, constipation.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:26:32) – So very gently, I think work with people on this. I think the biggest thing not to do is like follow an Instagram list of what not to eat for painful bladder, because it’s really a downward spiral to eating disorder, quite frankly. Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:26:48) – Agreed. Same thing with supplements. Don’t take the supplement list and buy everything on the list and start it all at once. Like.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:26:55) – Yeah, so true. So I want to briefly talk about mast cell activation syndrome. We’re seeing that a lot in our clinic. Certainly, you know, for our clients with endometriosis that’s very common. But we’re also seeing this. And people with endometriosis can also have itchy and or painful bladder syndrome. But we’re also seeing a significant uptick in our clients with mast cell activation because of long Covid. That’s kind of one of the telltale signs of long Covid. So long Covid could trigger bladder pain. That is really more of a immune dysregulation, a histamine activation. And so quercetin is one tool. Do you have any other tools? Is aloe helpful for that? What are your thoughts on histamine?

Heather Florio (00:27:41) – Quercetin is the best choice is when we’re talking in over-the-counter, separate of the prescription.

Heather Florio (00:27:46) – You know, hydrazine is the typical go to and a lot of cases from a pharmaceutical perspective. But from a natural perspective, yes, the quercetin. And actually, interestingly enough, during Covid we could keep quercetin in stock because they were actually using it to treat patients. And so people just started taking it prophylactically. And it was a really interesting experience. But yeah, I mean, and not everybody seems to necessarily have, you know, when they do have this component, the kind of the telltale for interstitial cystitis, separate of the long Covid, is that a lot of them see increases in their symptoms during high allergen time, spring, fall, summer, you know, just depending when their normal allergy triggers might happen. A lot of the times they’re seeing flares or triggers or interstitial cystitis is a really interesting thing because you can have even with the aloe vera capsules on board, you can have breakthrough flares due to histamine activation. Stress is a big one. And then of course diet, you know, eating the wrong food, too much of it per se.

Heather Florio (00:29:03) – It could be, you know, like going and drinking a bottle of wine.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:29:06) – And then for sure, like the high histamine foods, alcohol, fermented cheeses, things like that, lunch meats, stuff like that. Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:29:13) – And I think, you know, interesting. We go again to. Posited theories because we haven’t clinically been able to prove this. But many posited theories are that interstitial cystitis itself might be an autoimmune disorder because it has so many similar comorbidities to other autoimmune conditions. And so as a result, in the interestingly enough, they’ve done research where they tested out a neo bladder, you know, bladder removal and one they still had pain, the start of pain. And then two in the neo bladder it began attacking that. And so you were seeing the same response. So it’s like oh great. We could just replace our bladder and do this. And it’s like, no, actually you can’t just replace your bladder and get a new one, because it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not going to start attacking, which really leads towards that autoimmune theory.

Heather Florio (00:30:12) – But again, like it has not been clinically proven, but it is a positive theory.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:30:17) – Yeah. So I think for the clinicians listening who are working with these complex bladder cases, you have to really do kind of a whole system assessment. It could have a dysbiosis component. It could have an immune hyperactivity component or mast cell activation syndrome or the histamine component. There is very commonly a myofascial or and or pelvic floor myofascial component. There’s that neurologic crosstalk and central sensitization of the nervous system kind of top down triggers. And then there are the digestive dysregulation that exacerbate the bladder dysregulation. In addition to some of the behavioral things around constantly using the restroom just to try to prevent the symptoms from popping up later. Or, you know, that sort of putting the time to urinate closer and closer together becomes behaviorally exacerbating as well. And there are tools. So we have these pharmaceutical tools like hydroxy, Zien and Ketoprofen and Chrome and sodium. But I think sometimes it’s so much more valuable to start with. Like quercetin is a natural mast cell stabilizer.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:31:31) – It nourishes the vasculature system as well. And the lining of the vessels, which is really good for the local vascularization of the pelvis and the bladder, in addition to the bladder lining and kind of quenching those histamine mast cells, stabilizing the mast cells. So if we could get away with less suppression because the drugs are look, they can be very valuable in certain situations. But sometimes we have to be on them forever for longer. The system doesn’t kind of settle down if it’s so used to either an antihistamine or a mast cell stabilizer medication, your clients may need to be on that longer. So I like the idea of starting with some of these tools that are readily available. Have very little side effects, and can be played with in terms of people needing to be on them forever. Sometimes they’re able to come off them when all of those other drivers start to be unwound.

Heather Florio (00:32:29) – Oh yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, when you look at side effects, when you talk hydrazine, well, I think it’s over.

Heather Florio (00:32:36) – Don’t quote me on this. I think it’s like 5055 that dementia components can start to become a concern on continuing on that. Ellman, which we mentioned earlier, is currently undergoing class action litigation for causing retinal myopathy and making people go blind, as well as liver damage, hair loss, kidney damage, like so, you know, that’s why it’s been very important for us from the very beginning to be able to research our products to understand how they function. Not a single one of our products come out without some type of research behind it. Looking at safety profiles, you know, quercetin. But even when you talk natural, sometimes you have to be careful. Olivera. You think you can go to the health food store and just get the random bottle of aloe vera off the shelf and oh my gosh, it costs $10. Versus, you know, Desert Harvest is $68 regular price roughly per month. And, you know, so we have programs where they can. But if you compared milligrams to milligrams alone and a lot of those cases separate of the safety profile and what is in those or how those are processed, because they’re not the same thing, they can’t be the same thing.

Heather Florio (00:33:52) – We have a unique patented process. But knowing that even if you just compared milligrams to milligrams, you would see, interestingly enough, there’s another brand that’s pretty readily available in someone. Recently we have like a chart on our website. It’s like $360 to equal the same amount of milligrams as our one bottle for $68. I mean, just to give you an. Here’s the bottle right here. So this one bottle of super strength aloe vera takes roughly. This is how concentrated is it takes roughly 89 full grown aloe Barbara miller leaves to make one bottle. Yeah. So we go through a lot of aloe vera.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:34:35) – Where do you grow it.

Heather Florio (00:34:37) – So we grow it down in Mexico. It has ideal conditions for growing as well as very important to us is where actually our fields are actually at the base of a volcano. They’re certified organic. And it’s very important to us that we have that high nutrient content from the volcanic soil. The other thing is, is when you cut a leaf off of an aloe vera plant, I always say, if you’ve ever seen the ones in the grocery store, they’re just expensive water at that point, because the minute you cut a leaf off, malic acid begins to eat away at all of the nutrients in the aloe vera.

Heather Florio (00:35:13) – And within 6 to 8 hours, there’s no nutrients left. And so we are literally cutting and in process to make sure that we’re preserving the nutrients within 20 minutes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:35:25) – Oh my gosh, that’s great. So you haven’t had any side effects other than those initial digestive side effects in the 30 years you’ve been in business, do people tend to take this long term without challenges? Because sometimes, you know, if something’s working, we might need to stick with it. Is that safe?

Heather Florio (00:35:43) – Yeah. So we’ve had people taking it for 30 plus years from the very beginning, since 1993. The one thing that we recommend before starting this is, you know, going back to that histamine component, if you’re highly allergic to a lot of stuff, it’s safe to just, you know, we have like samples that customers. It’s a one day supply. They can take it like right in the crook of their arm with like take the powder out of the capsule with a little water, hold it there for 20 minutes and see if they develop any general allergic symptoms, which is what we recommend, because by the time you ingested, it’s a little bit more of a reaction if you’re allergic.

Heather Florio (00:36:22) – Yeah. And that’s pretty much it. You can be allergic to aloe vera I see.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:36:26) – Yeah. It’s important to test that for sure. So I would love to switch gears briefly and just talk about your path as a women’s health product business owner and developer and grower. So you began to work with your mom and are now the CEO of the company. How is your business journey been for any of our practitioners who are thinking about moving into the area of product development?

Heather Florio (00:36:53) – Don’t give up. It’s not easy. You know, I’ve been working or involved with Desert Harvest in some way since its inception. When it started in 1993, I was in high school, and so I started helping in a variety of different ways. By 2012, my parents were aging, and they’re like, we can’t keep doing this. Either you take this over or we’re going to have to figure something else out. And I said, okay. I was like, fine. And so I came on full time at that point, started taking over operations, and it became clear to me, you know, my mother had started getting really involved with pelvic floor physical therapy from the onset of when it was becoming a burgeoning new growing field.

Heather Florio (00:37:37) – And so I can remember being with her at IPS in Vegas, and it was like the first or second time it had ever happened. And there was like 75 people in that included the vendors, right? Yes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:37:54) – I might have been there in early 2000. Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:37:57) – And then now, you know, you go to we were just talking about being at the American Physical Therapy Association meeting not all pelvic points, of course, but I mean, you’re talking 13,000 people there and a completely different experience. And I mean, you talk about pelvic pain. I mean, they sell out instantaneously. And so we need so many more pelvic tees. It’s so needed. We recommend that to every single IC patient that calls us because we know that when they’re going, you know, they’re going to have that because they’re in so much pain. Their pelvic floor is probably hypertonic. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:38:34) – Like yeah definitely guarding at minimum. Yes.

Heather Florio (00:38:37) – Yes. And so we highly recommend that as part of their journey no matter what.

Heather Florio (00:38:43) – But yeah I mean over the years it started to become very important to me to craft products that were missing in the market or that were not either safe or sustainable enough, in my opinion. For a woman, for instance, Aloe Glide, that was really important to me. We had always had the personal lubricant, but it became even more important to me to start educating women around the world about lubricants, about what should go into your bio. On what should not go into your biome because there are really literally separate of us. There’s one other lubricant in the entire world that should probably go into a biome, because, you know, osmolality is so important. And we know the World Health Organization did their study in 2015 with third world country sex workers, and they studied lubricants to look at it from a safety profile. What was causing the biomes to break down? How could they be safer? And they tested all of these different ones for osmolality, and they set the first standard for osmolality that it should be 290 plus or -80 points and no more than that.

Heather Florio (00:39:58) – So that leaves you and lubricants are required to be FDA approved medical devices. Now, there are many bad actors out there, unfortunately, that are still not. I think the FDA, they were a little busy with Covid, but right, right.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:40:16) – Yes.

Heather Florio (00:40:17) – So they have some catching up to do. But I think it was really important for me that we began kind of letting people know about how their biome should be. It’s not just about pH. We need to also focus on osmolality. And then we also need to understand that Amalie, your biome is completely different and that if you put an acidic anal lubricant in your anus, your epithelial cell layer is literally going to fall out almost instantaneously because that is actually more subject to than osmolality and it is almost an instantaneous. Whereas the vagina, you know, is the vaginal wall is going to be more of a slowly dry out over time and then kind of fall.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:40:59) – Out kind of thing. Well, and it’s designed to be more acidic there. Yes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:41:04) – Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:41:04) – So and it’s really important that, you know, that the lubricants osmolality is set, right, so that, you know, the fluid can flow in and out of the cells. And so like Desert Harvest aloe Glide is an FDA cleared medical device as a sexual lubricant and as a vaginal moisturizer. And we’re currently undergoing fertility testing. So that’s our newest. Great. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:41:28) – Exciting. So it really seems like from a business standpoint, you took, you know, what your mom built was inspired by the need to help her sister. And then you and she, over the years, have really thought differently and started thinking about this as a company that could support women’s sexual health in a way that’s really and just physical health in general, in a way that respects the normal, natural, ideal way that the system should be running with a healthy microbiome, with healthy pH, with healthy osmolality, with removing the portion of the aloe leaf that has been connected to liver challenges and other problematic side effects.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:42:16) – So I think that commitment makes it harder to run a business, I would imagine, because it’s more expensive. But there’s got to be a sense of kind of challenge and excitement around it, too.

Heather Florio (00:42:29) – It is rewarding. It’s gratifying because, you know, what I do here really allows me to do what I love, which is to support work that others are doing and work that I can do myself to go educate women around the world. Women know so little. It doesn’t matter where I’m at, what I’m doing. Like the minute someone hears, oh, you work in women’s pelvic and sexual health, they’re all like, can I ask you? I mean, I get the most intimate, personal questions ever in the grocery store, wherever and on an airplane. And so it’s spreading that knowledge that is so needed. For instance, in August, I’m really excited about this project. We were supposed to do it last year, and we had to push it off to this year because of safety concerns.

Heather Florio (00:43:19) – But we’re actually going to Peru, and we’re bringing indigenous women out of the mountains of Cusco. And so over three days, because everything is word of mouth. And they said, expect hundreds each day they will come out. And we’re teaching an entire pelvic and sexual health course to these women. And I’m so excited. That’s my passion right there is to be able to change things for women, because the stories that we have to hear, the experiences, no one should be dismissed. No one should be told it’s all in their head. Nobody should have to feel that way. And we have so much catching up to do in women’s health care. And I actually created a new company, which will of course. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:44:06) – My entrepreneur. Yeah. Entrepreneurs get that. We get that. I’m always got the 5 or 6 other things on the side.

Heather Florio (00:44:12) – Yeah, exactly. And so we developed an. Continuously learning autonomous AI model to research patterns in women’s health and research data, while also giving access to women around the world to the top women’s health care practitioners in the world.

Heather Florio (00:44:33) – We’ve already got signups, and once we get live and launched and we’ll go even further. So our ideas, you know, when you do a study, I mean, how are we going to catch up women’s health care when we’re already over 100 years behind and we’re studying segments, you know, little segments here, little segments there. But yet, you know, for instance, even for us in this industry, we make all of our products based on a white woman’s lactobacillus dominant vagina. We do not think about different biomes and different ethnicities. We don’t think that black women have a completely different bio makeup like I do or you do. And so it’s very important to me that we gather data from all over the world. So this isn’t just going to be exclusive to the United States. So that’s coming soon. And same thing with like new products. It’s always and I say to anybody who’s probably listening, it’s constant innovation. My brain doesn’t stop, as you probably understand. It’s like we’ve got to do something.

Heather Florio (00:45:38) – And so like, for instance, we actually have a new product that will come out this summer. We’ve been in testing. So right now the standard over-the-counter for recurrent UTIs is demand is the standard kind of over-the-counter. Well, in research demand only binds to E coli bacteria. And so we discovered a new ingredient and studied the safety profile. And right now we know for sure it binds to three. And we’re studying two others that potentially binds to. And so we’ve been doing a little bit of a pilot deliverability study with live UTI free the UK organization and their audience. And then we’re hoping to be able to release that product this summer. So.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:46:21) – That’s very exciting. I love all of this. And you know, when you’re looking at different ethnic populations, it might be also really valuable to look at different like food sources. You know what I mean? Like the microbiome may not vary by ethnicity as much as local diet. So that’s something to consider. And like local stressors because that can impact the microbiome.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:46:46) – And when you’re in Peru, please gather information about maca and the other adaptogens that they use there because that could really help for perimenopause. Yeah perimenopause menopause we use some of that. But I think how we use it now and functional nutrition is very, you know, it’s kind of refined exactly what you were talking about. Like it’s stripped of potentially some of the depth value that we could get from really learning from the people who are using it on the ground.

Heather Florio (00:47:18) – Exactly. And using it in their natural state. So that’s the other thing, you know, going back to where you mentioned the FDA and safety and stuff like that, they can only do so much. They’re so overwhelmed. And right now, every, you know, supplement or skincare company in the world is subject to some level of FDA standards. But those FDA standards are like here, I did the required basic testing and I’m compliant. And so for so many things, you don’t even know what’s in the product or whether it’s like, interestingly enough, I use this as an example, but in recent research, they came out with the cold medicine and they came out and they said it does absolutely nothing.

Heather Florio (00:48:06) – And it’s just, you know, a perception it’s not doing any harm. And the FDA said, well, we’re a safety organization. We’re not an efficacy organization. So they can continue to sell to the American public. And I can tell you right now, I’m not a name namer, but there is a juice that is readily available in the United States and aloe vera juice. And this is many aloe vera juices on the market. There’s only two ways to preserve juice, and this is why we don’t recommend them ever for bladder patients. And this is why we do not make a juice, because the only way to preserve them is bladder irritating preservatives or heat treated. So once you heat treat it, you’ve got really expensive water because aloe vera is 98.5% water. And so we’ve ran tests on juices, other products, things like that. And there are a ton on the market that are just really expensive water, unfortunately. And so that goes into the idea that just because and what are you going to do as a consumer? Spend the money for the expensive testing, or do you just have to trust the brand that, you know, you talked about brand trust and brand identity or that maybe they’re putting up the research, the information, the third party testing, things like that to kind of prove that their products are what they say they are.

Heather Florio (00:49:35) – And in most cases, the supplement industry, even the skincare industry doesn’t do that because it’s profits over people.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:49:43) – Yeah. And I really believe that those of us kind of professionally working in functional medicine, functional nutrition, pelvic physical therapy, where we’re recommending these products to our clients, we do have a responsibility to get to know the actual companies, because, you know, there are many good companies that have been in business for 30 years, 50 years. This makes a big difference because you’ve had the time, the resources, you know, it takes a lot of resources to do that. Additional third party testing. It takes a lot of research, as you’re saying, to extract the ingredients within 20 minutes. That’s a huge process, literally, on an industrial ish farm, you know, in Mexico, you’ve got to have an operations effectiveness, which is not easy to do. And I really think that when we think about any of these products that we’re utilizing to help our clients, we have to really understand them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:50:44) – So I really appreciate you coming here and sharing your research and your experience and the experiences of your clients, because having that 30 years of data with specific products helps us to put that into an entirety of a plan of care, if that makes sense.

Heather Florio (00:51:05) – Yes. And that’s why we do this. You know, it’s been a struggle, years of struggle for legitimacy, that we’re not just some hack, some natural products. In this day and age, it’s a little bit easier. But in the 90s, no. No. It was like fighting tooth and nail. We realized very early on we were going to have to spend the money to invest in the research, to show and to let people know up front. So what is become kind of novel now? And everybody just kind of jumps in on the bandwagon. This was something that was very rare in the 90s for a supplement.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:51:46) – And it’s very.

Heather Florio (00:51:47) – True.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:51:48) – Yeah. And it was even very rare to consider that nutrients could help with pelvic pain, with bladder pain.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:51:55) – I mean, even when I started lecture on this in roughly 2006, 2008, 2010, which was, you know, gosh, 20 years really after you started, well, ten years anyway. And, you know, it was difficult to get people to listen to that perspective because it just didn’t seem like, you know, it was medicalized enough. There was a lot of reasons why people were resistant. It was like, how could something so simple, natural be as effective as a drug? And it really is, and in many cases, it’s better because we don’t have the secondary consequences of some of the medications for sure.

Heather Florio (00:52:35) – Exactly, exactly. You know, we even have a CBD product, which it took us years. We actually studied full spectrum, broad spectrum isolate. We studied topicals, we studied everything, and we worked with the University of Colorado. And we actually found that the topicals cannabis is inert. It has to have a carrier to make it systemic. So, you know, it almost becomes a marketing ploy because they add things.

Heather Florio (00:53:04) – If you look at the label, actually they have like camphor, menthol, arnica, you know, so.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:53:09) – They add things that you can feel.

Heather Florio (00:53:11) – Are things that actually impact the muscles. Whereas cannabis is a great moisturizer, you know, it’s great. And so we actually found that CBD isolate was the responder in our test groups. And so as a result, we went to the University of Colorado. And we actually did a bioavailability study where we were able to show it’s 25% more bioavailable than any other CBD product out on the market. And then we followed that up, because there’s almost 8000 CBD brands in the United States. And it’s the wild, wild West, and it’s being completely unregulated because of legislation that still needs to be tightened up. And so we went to McGill University in Montreal and actually studied what mechanisms of pain it actually function for, because they say it works for everything. And so in the research that we did, we had to do it in mouse models, but we were able to validate it with human donors because we can actually keep the neural pathways alive for up to a month.

Heather Florio (00:54:16) – And so we were able to validate it that way, because at the time, we couldn’t do any cannabis related research with humans. And so it was kind of our way around it. And so, you know, we studied arthritis, we studied bladder pain, we studied nerve injury, pain, chemotherapy, pain, surgical pain, mouse pain. And what we found, we found a variety of different pain models that it didn’t really seem to respond for joint pain or muscular pain, it really was only neuropathic pain. And so like the chronic nerve injury pain, 56% reduction in pain after 24 hours, 78% with the bladder, and similar results for the chemotherapy and surgical pain.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:54:57) – That’s really valuable because that’s actually the more difficult pain to unwind from a clinical standpoint for sure. Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:55:05) – And so being able to relax those is really important. And I know that even in the industry right now within the pelvic industry, there are a lot of people also utilizing CBD lubricants. Those aren’t FDA cleared. That’s the one thing, you know, we haven’t even touched it because legally you have to have a 510 medical device and the FDA will not approve anything with CBD or cannabis in it whatsoever.

Heather Florio (00:55:35) – And so those are one of those like gray areas where there’s all these products coming out. But we don’t have necessarily again, probably a great moisturizer.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:55:46) – Sure, but no real data on efficacy and potentially safety when we can’t study it. Yeah.

Heather Florio (00:55:52) – Exactly. Like what is it doing to the biome? What is it doing to the vaginal biome? If you insert a CBD suppository, like what is it actually doing right.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:56:01) – Really really valuable. Yeah. Well thank you so much, Heather. Where can all of the women’s and pelvic health practitioners listening to this find more about your company and your products and the work you’re doing?

Heather Florio (00:56:14) – Oh yeah, definitely. They can definitely visit us on Desert Harvest. Com or if you have specific questions. Want samples. As a practitioner, you can go online and we have a form that you can fill out. You can call us at (800) 222-3901, or you can message us on social Instagram or Facebook. Either one does or harvest aloe vera. Thank you so much Jessica.

Heather Florio (00:56:39) – This is wonderful.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:56:40) – Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciated an even deeper insight into this supplement world, because it’s so important that we learn about it. It can be complicated for a reason. And so as clinicians, we really have to be ahead of all of that. So thank you for sharing all of your wisdom.

Heather Florio (00:56:57) – Yeah. Hope it helps. Nuggets.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:56:59) – Yes yes. All right. Thanks everyone for being here. And we’ll see you next time. I am so grateful to Heather Florio for spending so much time with us to help us really understand the inner workings of the supplement industry, of looking at and actually doing the research to not just know if natural products are safe, but if they are effective, and in many cases, they’re safer and more effective than pharmaceuticals. They’re great tools to use in combination with pelvic, physical and occupational therapy. All forms of pelvic myofascial release, you know, full body myofascial release, digestive health, functional nutrition. We have to become very integrative when we’re working with chronic conditions that are so complex.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:57:55) – Even though we talked about in this episode some of the categories of painful bladder syndrome, we also dove into the fact that many of these cases have multiple levels of complexity and cross systems, because if someone has initially purely a bladder problem, that problem can spread to become myofascial pain, neuropathic pain, and we have to have a really deep and wide and well understood toolbox to be able to work with these clients who are struggling with complex conditions for years, if not decades. So I’m so grateful for Heather for sharing with us her company’s research process, the innovations they are leading, the work that they’re doing around global women’s health. And so I’m so grateful to have been able to share this with you. So enjoy. If you want to learn more about how to take a complete functional nutrition approach to bladder pain, like we talked about in this episode, I strongly encourage you to join our Functional Nutrition Certificate program, where we get deep dive into all the biomes that we’ve talked about in this episode natural products to support the bladder, digestive function, all the nutritional strategies we talked about in this episode, and absolutely go and follow Heather Florio and Desert Harvest to learn more about the new innovations they have coming up, not just around bladder pain, but around vulvar vaginal health, sexual health, perimenopause and menopause.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:59:32) – They’re really on the leading edge of product development, safety, efficacy and research. I’ll see you next week on the Integrative Women’s Health podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.