How CBD Helps Improve Your Overall Wellness With Brooke Alpert

 

Much has been said about the great health benefits of CBD. At the same time, there is still a lack of information and often times – misinformation. Adam Markel’s guest this week will fill in these gaps. Brooke Alpert, M.S., R.D., C.D.N. is a certified holistic cannabis practitioner, a nationally recognized nutrition expert, and a best-selling author. Here, she shares the story behind her move into the CBD industry, motivated by her husband’s suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease. Building on her learning from this experience, Brooke brought CBD into her private practice and saw many of her clients’ overall wellness improve. Brooke provides a deeper dive into the amazing benefits of CBD for balancing your health and shares her own brand of CBD products called Daily Habit. Listen in on this episode to learn more about CBD, how it differs from traditional marijuana, where legalization is headed and more.

Get the newest Conscious PIVOT Podcast episodes delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

DOING THIS for 10 Seconds Can Change Your Life! Click here to watch Adam’s Inspiring TEDx Talk!

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How CBD Helps Improve Your Overall Wellness With Brooke Alpert

I’m chuckling to myself because this was take two. I flubbed my name on the first take which is always fun. Every time I think I have something in my life sussed, like knowing my name, then the universe has this wonderful way of bringing me right back down to reality and it’s a great process. More than anything that I’ve learned at this point, humility is important. In many ways, I’ve had a lot of wonderful successes in my life. I’m not going to speak about those here and now. I don’t mind speaking about them, but frankly, I learned so much more from my mistakes and from the moments where I either was humbled or was just able to find humility through a much gentler process. Those are more of the things that have taught me and have informed my life in ways that have brought about what I want most, which is peace and joy, feeling love for myself and for others.

It’s one of those curious things we see all around us in the world right now. I’ve been wrestling with this the last couple of days and I’m only realizing it even in this moment. I was watching a TED Talk, and I won’t say who was giving the talk, but it was a viral talk that was discussing how success favors the bold and how being bold is important. I agree with that. I think that in many ways being bold is quite important. At the same time, it’s a bit of a riddle in that, seeking to be bold triggers the ego quite a bit and people start to pretend in ways that they have all the answers or that they are all that. It’s one of the antitheses of humility.

Somehow or another, that energy of knowing and that energy of boldness, confidence, and passion even attract a lot of people to them, because it seems like they have the answers and that’s a very attractive force in the universe. Again, the riddle for me or at least the thing I’m curious about is whether you can maintain humility and also still succeed in life. I think there’s a way to do that. I know I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it. I’ve experienced what it looks like when we forget some of those lessons then the universe has a way of giving us big moments of clarity that are sometimes gentle and not so gentle.

That’s an interesting lead into the fact I have a great honor to converse with somebody that I’ve never met before. She was referred to me. We had this particular discussion on our books for several months but the pandemic interfered. Her name is Brooke Alpert. Brooke Alpert is a certified holistic cannabis practitioner and nationally recognized nutrition expert and bestselling author. Brooke’s interest in cannabis, particularly in CBD, came from trying to help her husband manage his debilitating autoimmune disease. Seeing what CBD could do for her husband, Brooke brought CBD into her private practice and saw many of her client’s overall wellness improve.

Her client’s positive reaction led Brooke to go back to school to become a certified holistic cannabis practitioner. Having to navigate her husband and her clients through all the options and seeing how many of the products out there were not adequate led Brooke to create her brand of CBD products. Brooke’s nutrition and cannabis expertise has led her to be featured on national television regularly, including Good Morning America, The Dr. Oz Show, Today Show, Access Hollywood and more. It’s such a pleasure to have you on the show finally, Brooke. Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

You’ve got an impressive resume CV. What’s not part of that bio that I read that you would love for people to know about you?

I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question. I’m a mom on top of that all. I mentioned my husband but I’m a mom too. As much as I’m proud of my career, I’m grateful for my two children and getting to experience the highs and lows of everything that’s been coming. Since day one of being a mom has been incredible for my business, for me as an individual and for my growth as a mother. It’s an important part of the whole story here.

Have the ability to be okay with things not being perfect. Share on X

With everything else, there’s also this responsibility for other humans. That’s in the mix somehow, a small thing like that. I’d love to get a sense of what was the pandemic like for you. I know you and I were talking about how we found some peace outside of where we typically spend our time. Maybe we can start there and see where it takes us.

I live in New York City. At the beginning of the pandemic, this was a rough place to be. The craziest thing about living in New York City is we live in apartment buildings. I’m on the 22nd floor of the building I live in. There’s no way to be isolated or to avoid people, even throwing out the trash there’s exposure. We were fortunate to be able to take our kids out of the city for a few months and go live in the country where there was space and where I could open a door and be in the backyard even in the freezing cold. We were up in Massachusetts where it’s freezing until May. To have that freedom and that privilege of having another place to live was such a blessing for us. There were such incredible moments for us during the pandemic that it was able to shine a beautiful light on something that was tragic and terrible. It’s still occurring now but it made us closer as a family. As a working mom to have that time with my kids in that intensity and the highs and lows, I feel like it means I’m going to constantly look back on and remember with wonderful memories.

Would you share one of those beautiful moments that you can recall back?

I ended up making a photo album of our time in quarantine because I felt that this is a moment in time for my children that in 10, 20, 30 years, they’re going to be talking about. I thought having this album would be amazing. I had a business call and it was over an hour and my kids were losing their minds. I ended up trying to sneak under my desk to hide and they found me. My husband took a picture of the two kids, sitting on my back while I’m trying to have this call and take notes. My face looks like it’s terrorized because I am. I am terrorized by my children. It’s still amazing. That picture brings back this level of intimacy that we don’t normally have this time. It captures a moment. It’s something that was stressful in those 60 minutes but yet in hindsight is the funniest thing that happened. The picture is hilarious. I should post that one day. Maybe I will.

I would love to see that Brooke. You gave me the chills because I was imagining there’s that old, black and white photo of John Kennedy Jr. under his dad’s desk when JFK’s in the Oval Office. That whole idea the world within the world. We have this professional world and this adult world that we live in and yet the kids’ world within that world is a different thing entirely.

 

All walls were broken down and even on Zoom meetings or even when I was doing a podcast. There was an expectation that 1.1 of my kids would come in. There was something comical because pre-pandemic I would have been mortified. My life of a working mom and being a mom are separate and segregated. If it wasn’t my kids coming in, it was whoever I was talking to these kids coming in or something happening to interrupt the flow and we all went with it. That’s been a nice part of it all, integrating our lives into our working lives as well.

Something beautiful about that, I never know exactly why I start these shows in the place that I do that opened myself up in that moment as we start to what spirit or universe or how I’m being guided in the moment to say something. It’s curious because when we allow ourselves to flow with things that are, flowing with what is, it’s remarkable where we can find ourselves led. We started this idea of what’s and how important is humility in our world to our success and everything else. What could be more humbling in the best way, not in a bad way at all but the humility of being on a business call and trying to maintain a professional whatever and taking notes and all the rest but your kids are climbing all over you and you’re being tortured in the moment because you’re not able to pull back and go, “I’m going to not just laugh at this someday but this is one of those priceless moments that’s going to get captured because my husband was right on point to take a picture of this circus happening.” How cool?

Yes.

I feel your emotion now. It’s beautiful. There will be pandemic anthologies and stories of people’s lives that will include moments like that where we look back at this and find not just rays of sun, but full-on moments that you go, “Wow.” That I can integrate a life in work, business, and career with the life of a mom or a dad or others. I didn’t know that was possible. What’s your beat on the concept of work-life balance now?

It’s bullshit. As a working mom, a work-life balance, there is no such thing. My life is my life. I was able to physically segregate the two but even when I was in my office, when I still went to an office every day, it was intertwined. I’d have a few hours of patients and work with I need to sign up a daughter for summer camp or get this doctor’s appointment or responding to another message from a teacher. It was never a clean break when I was in the office. I still had one foot in the parenting moment because there was always stuff thrown at you. Working from home, they’re in school in person but most of the time, they’re often in remote. It’s an incredible juggling act. Some days I can catch all those falls and other days I’m dropping a lot.

Ever since the beginning of the quarantine I’ve become a lot gentler with myself of this is the best I can do now and that’s okay. If I can’t get in my workout and my healthy eating, my job then quality time with my kids, I’m going to do the best that I can. A lot of that made me a better practitioner, as well as a better spouse and a better parent, a better daughter. It goes back to the humility and humbling moments of I can’t do everything that I set out to do every day but I’m going to do the best I can. I might eat a lot of CBD to help me through the best that I can. I’m going to put my head on my pillow every night, knowing that tomorrow’s another day. I used to beat myself up when I didn’t accomplish everything. That’s been left in 2019 at this point.

As soon as we acknowledge that the pandemic is not going away anytime soon and that this is our current life, the sooner we can adapt. Share on X

I wanted to know how being gentle with yourself evolved. Is that something that’s been difficult for you in your life to be gentle with yourself?

I’m a New York City woman who runs two businesses solo. I have two kids and a sick husband. There isn’t that time to make myself the priority or to have kindness towards myself. One of the many blessings of the pandemic is bringing that kindness to myself. The way I would talk to one of my patients or I’ve talked to my kids like, “You didn’t get an A on a test or you didn’t eat perfectly or you weren’t feeling great. It’s okay, you got through the day.” The bar was set lower but it’s a lot more pleasant.

That’s interesting because I’m a native New Yorker. We live in California and we jockey. We were talking about this jockey between San Diego and a little island off the coast of Cape Cod, which is where my wife and I went for our second honeymoon. We spent seven months there without our kids because our littlest ones, I don’t know, what are the ages of your kids?

Six and twelve.

Our youngest is now 20 and our oldest is 28. They’re all out of the house. We were empty nesters for a little while until the pandemic hit. We had two who are in college that were coming home and we’re like, “What? Talk about cruelty. We waited 28 years for this moment, now you’re coming back?” In the end, we ended up going off to Massachusetts and it’s chilly there especially until summer months. The ability to be okay with things, not just perfect. I know a lot of people are recovering perfectionists, that’s what I say about myself but I don’t know that we ever recover from that. The idea that in our minds, things have to be a certain way in order for us to feel good about ourselves. I surf now. I love the ocean. I’ve spent a lot of time in the ocean my whole life. There’s a point where you talk about humility, where if you don’t have humility in the ocean, you’re easily prey. Not prey to sharks but prey to the waves, prey to Mother Nature. You’re a dead meat in the ocean if you don’t have a healthy respect for its power.

I feel like when the pandemic hit, it was like one big wave and people got hit and pummeled. When I was a lifeguard at Jones Beach back in the day, you see the look on people’s faces, they’re joyful, smiling and laughing and then they get hit with one of those short break waves and then they’re petrified, like they saw a ghost but then it goes away. Six seconds later, they’re back up on their feet and they’re all like, “It was a rogue wave, no problem.” They’re back to having fun and dancing then the next wave hits them and there’s a different look on their face or they’re in a rip current and they’re getting pulled away from the shore and they can’t stand. That joyful look turns into a scared and panicked look. That’s when we knew as lifeguards, we had to get in the water because that person was freaking and the next moment they could be out of sight. That’s what the pandemic was like at the beginning, that people got hit with that first wave and fought up, “This is going away. It’s a bad flu. As soon as the season is done, we’ll all be fine by spring or summer.”

It was one wave after another wave after another wave then it was this relentless set of these big ass pummeling things. Nobody knew when it was going to end and still even a lot of uncertainty around when the waves are finally going to stop crashing on us. At a certain point, there’s this humility that emerges from that where even our desire to have things be perfect takes a back seat to what you described, which was, “Can we live each day in some meaningful and enjoyable way without everything having to be perfectly sequenced for the future so that someday we’re deserving of our respect and love?” I know that was a bit of a ramble. Is there anything that I said you want to respond to?

For my 40th birthday, we went to Costa Rica and my 12-year-old, she was 10 at the time or, I always say you don’t turn your back on the ocean if you’re in the water, you never turn your back on the water. She got pummeled hard and she learned a lesson and became scared. I said, “As long as you face it, you’ll never have anything to worry about because then you’ll see what’s coming at you.” As a Long Island girl, Jones Beach hits me hard but to connect that with my daughter as well. That lends to this pandemic as soon as we acknowledge this is not going away anytime soon, this is our current life, this is how we have to live. It made it a lot easier. It’s the acceptance phase of the stages of grief. It made it a lot easier for us once we realized a month into our quarantine. We’re not going home anytime soon. This is an ending. Life isn’t going back to normal anytime soon. It made it a lot easier and the coping skills because you accept where you are. You can do that day to day as well. It doesn’t have to be a giant yearlong pandemic but accepting this is my life now and I can only do the best I can and what I have and keep facing forward is important.

 

Do you think we’ll go back to ignoring these lessons once the pandemic is in our rear-view mirror? What do you think as a New Yorker? Growing up in New York, we’re gung-ho, high-energy, angsty people. Move forward, you’re on the street in Manhattan. You don’t look anywhere. You don’t make eye contact. You don’t look right or left. Straight ahead. If somebody is in your way, they better move because I’m not stopping. Are we going back to that?

I don’t think so. If you think about history and in people who lived through the Great Depression or who lived through intense times, it shaped them into their older life. I dealt with a lot of patients in my nutrition practice whose families were from the Great Depression and courted food and had a specific relationship with food. That affected them and affected their children and their grandchildren. I don’t know what we’re going to take away from this yet. It’s still a long time to learn what the lesson is but this has shaped us somehow. In another way between the mask-wearing and the hand sanitizer and hand cleaning, neither one of my children have gotten sick. This is normally cold, flu season, summer is filled with disgusting viruses whether it’s a stomach bug or hoof and mouth disease. We’ve had none of that. There’s stuff to learn and take forward. It’s going to be interesting. How many times, when you worked in an office, you’d go with a cold? You clear your throat on the street now and people part away from you. I can’t imagine normal looking like the past. I can only imagine there’s got to be some new normal that’s going to happen.

It’s interesting because we’ve learned a lot, including that we can work differently to be able to get work done in a remote place. The school thing is quite difficult. How’s your kid’s experience been with that? Our youngest is in college so they’re taking all their classes online. While they miss the campus and the parties and all this stuff that we know you’re paying for to go to college, the classes themselves have been great. The teachers have been able to adapt and they’re getting a lot out of their online classes. It feels like that. How’s it for your kids at their age with where they’re at?

For my older one it’s been great. We come from a place of privilege that both my daughters go to a private school here in New York City. It’s super small. The school was flexible and was able to make their own rules to work for the students. There’s such a blessing there. To leave private schools, if you’re doing it remotely, I’ve never felt like my money was better spent than during the remote days. My little one was in kindergarten when the school shut down and that was a challenge for her but this 2021, the months that they have been in remote, she’s adapted well. She is comfortable with it and has become independent. They’re learning, being challenged and independent. I’ll take it.

It will be fodder for sociologists and scientists to be writing about this for generations. I want to talk a bit about the pivot in your life that led you to be a practitioner, the way of CBD in particular. I use CBD, my wife does as well. Our son is in a marketing business that’s among the products that they digitally promote are CBD products. I’m a big believer. I’m sure there are a lot of our readers that are as well. There may be some people that still are confused about or don’t understand or still think maybe it’s something illegal there. Maybe you could tell us a bit about how you got into that to begin with.

CBD is like the ultimate wellness vitamin. Share on X

I’ve been a registered dietician for several years. I’ve had a private practice. My specialty was weight loss for the first decade. I loved what I did. I talked to people about food and exercise and pooping. I was like, “This is the dream job.” While I was helping many people in my office, my husband was someone who I wasn’t able to reach. He suffers from an autoimmune disease called Autoimmune Peripheral Neuropathy, which is a broad term for incredible pain from his knees to his toes and his elbows to his fingertips with limited mobility and stamina. He’s not able to stand or walk for any length of time. He’s legally handicapped because of it. It’s a progressive disease. When I was pregnant with our second daughter, it progressed to his hands right before we had her. It’s hard as a health practitioner to not be able to help your partner.

I had him on every diet that I could think of that would work. I learned about something called the Wahls protocol, which was introduced by Dr. Terry Wahls. It was this protocol for MS. She brought herself into remission out of MS with this strict diet. I had been eating liver and cabbage for three meals a day for a period of time. Anytime I’d be like, “Another doctor.” At one point I was trying to take him to Tijuana for stem cells. We were going there. He finally sat me down. It was like, “How about you just be my wife?” No more diets, nothing helped. Nothing made him feel well enough to make any of the restrictions worth it.

I joke in hindsight that I almost wish he asked to see other people than to ask me to stop giving him a diet because I felt helpless. To see him struggling taking care of our children or living a quality of life, it’s hard. I came up with the term cannabis-friendly, which is a polite word for a pothead. He’s, in hindsight, been self-medicating for years. I started around the time that he asked me to not be his doctor. I started seeing some cool research about CBD and pain, and CBD and PTSD, and two of which Todd suffers from. He has PTSD from a childhood operation that went bad. I found a decent quality one of a brand that I thought I could trust. I said, “Eat whatever you want but having you add this in and I don’t know much about it but it’s made from pot.” He was open to it. He’s like, “There’s no liver, there’s no cabbage, calm down.”

You gave him choices between liver and pot. “Would you like this chocolate or would you like this chalk? You choose.”

Within about a month or two of him taking the product, we were trying to teach my older one at the time had to ride a two-wheeler bike, which any parent knows is brutal, even for the healthiest of people. He was able to participate. This is something where he would normally sit on the sidelines. We looked at each other and we said, “What was the difference?” The only thing that had changed was the adding of CBD into his lifestyle. From there, I did some research and it was self-education at this point. I learned a lot about CBD and anxiety. A light bulb went off for a lot of my patients who are binge eaters and emotional eaters. A lot of that stems from their anxiety.

That handful of my patients that I had a nice relationship with or a long-term relationship with I said, “I’m interested in what CBD could do with your anxiety. Therefore, your emotional eating, let’s give this a try.” There are around five patients that I tried it with around the same. It was a month of August a couple of years ago. All five of them had an incredible change. As their practitioner, I had been giving them all the tips in the world of how to handle their emotional eating. We had food diaries, kitchen curfews and planning ahead.

 

We would only shop for certain things that they couldn’t binge on. It was all barely making a dent. All of a sudden, we address the anxiety and suddenly they were like, “My kids’ goldfish aren’t interesting to me anymore or I don’t need that extra glass of wine or whatever it was.” That’s when I said I need to learn more. If I was going to recommend it to more patients, I needed to be better educated than Googled education. I went back. As I was in school doing my training to become a cannabis practitioner, I kept hearing the sound in my head. It was CBD is the ultimate wellness vitamin. I was like, “This isn’t a true wellness supplement. I’ve been using it for illness with my husband but this is the ultimate wellness vitamin.”

You’re getting to the root cause of why somebody binge eats or does other things that ultimately create the inflammation and pain in their bodies.

The ultimate goal of CBD is to help your body maintain homeostasis.

Equilibrium. Is that the balance feature?

It wants to keep you okay. If we’re not sleeping or we’re suffering from pain anxiety, all of that is we’re a bit out of balance. Not to minimize those conditions but the body is overcompensating or overreacting and it was on a tilt. By taking CBD, it triggers the body to bring you back into that balance. I started looking for a product that felt like a wellness product to recommend to my clients. Everything was pills, tinctures, and gummies. I wrote a book, anti-sugar. I cannot recommend gummies to my clients. There was nothing that screened wellness. I did what every dumb entrepreneur does. I went and created my own. I couldn’t find exactly what I looked for. I went ahead and created Daily Habit. I wanted a CBD product that screamed wellness, that felt wellness, not another pill to take for all my clients who take many medications and supplements. Not a tincture where you pour oil into your mouth and not a gummy that’s part of a treat. I wanted a wellness supplement. That’s what Daily Habit is.

What’s the distinction then because I’m getting a sense that the gummies have sugar in them and that’s the issue with that. I’m not sure what’s challenging about the oil tincture. I’d love to get a sense of what distinguishes the product that you created. What you said is a great piece of advice to entrepreneurs. It’s been said before, I don’t know that people pay attention to it in the sense that this is not that when you see this truly something that’s missing in the marketplace, something that you believe in, not just something you go, “That’s missing. I should get involved in that.” That’s its issue. Being in business is excruciating on a good day. There has to be this combination of both something that is valuable and something that you have a true interest in. Otherwise, you quit. People will quit easily on a good day but on a bad day, it’s that much more profound. What is it about you looking at the products that were out there and deciding to create something? What is the delta there, the gap that you filled?

Daily Habit, it’s the first full spectrum CBD powder. Our product is a powder. It’s something that you can add into your smoothies, you mix into your coffees or your teas. It is not another pill to swallow. It’s not a tincture where you’re using a pipette and a droplet of putting oil into your mouth. It’s a powder. Powder is the ultimate wellness vibe. You put powdered greens in your smoothies, you put powdered collagen in your coffee. That’s where I want Daily Habit to fall into. I wanted it to be in that cabinet with your products that you do to optimize your health, not in your medicine cabinet that you take when you’re not feeling well. That was the distinction.

There’s a mindset piece there. I realized that powder is different in other ways but there’s a mindset component of it. Is that what you’re getting at?

When you scoop a powder and you put it into your coffee and you blend it whether you’re making a Bulletproof coffee or a regular coffee, whatever works for you, you put a scoop of powder to your smoothie. You’re making a commitment to yourself that, “I’m doing something to make this better for me, to make me feel better.” All of a sudden, you have this beautiful cup of coffee that you’ve turned into something that sets your day up for success or your chamomile tea at night to know that you’re drinking it to help you have a good night’s sleep with Daily Habit in it. It was a mindset about how we’re using the product. I want it to move CBD from the illness world into the wellness world.

That’s a powerful distinction. I’ll ask you more of a technical question about bioavailability. I’m no expert on this but let’s say something that’s more bioavailable is better for us in the sense that we’re getting what we’re after in spending that money and committing to taking something versus something that we might come out with the next time we hit the bathroom and it’s gone and you go, “That was expensive.” Is the product that you’ve created high in bioavailability?

I’m all science. I needed something that was scientifically proven. I needed to know that the raw materials that we were working with were the best that I could find and the best that I could source. Most important is that it was grown in the US. All of our hemp was grown in the US and that it was organically grown. Hemp can soak up anything from the soil. It’s important that any hemp products that you’re using or traditional cannabis products that you’re using are all grown in clean soil. That’s organic soil. The great thing about hemp is that it can clean polluted areas but that’s not the hemp I want to be consuming. Let him clean up some wastelands.

I wanted clean hemp. Our base is coconut powder and it’s twofold. Our base is coconut powder, which is 50% MCTs. The MCTs are those healthy fats that are well-known for brain health, for function, for quick thinking so if any of us struggle thinking quickly, those MCTs, that fat, it feeds your brain for brain energy. I thought that was a great combination. The coconut powder that the MCT is from turns into a beautiful non-dairy creamer when you mix it into drinks. It acts as if you’re putting a non-dairy cream on top of your coffee. Not only are you getting this awesome wellness supplement, you’re getting these healthy fats that are great for your brain and then you have this beautiful cup of coffee that you wouldn’t have had without it or you would have needed carbohydrates and sugar to make it taste better. It was multifaceted. When you combine all of those healthy fats with high-quality CBD, the bioavailability is incredible and the effects are great.

In the sense, it’s preventative and it’s also something that would be an intervention of sorts for people that are already finding they have inflammation or illnesses or pain that’s the result of inflammation. There are a lot of autoimmune things that are out there that people don’t know what to do about which is sad. My mom passed away from an illness related to that. Everything from fibromyalgia to Crohn’s or Epstein-Barr, there are too many to count that are these either misdiagnosed or undiagnosed but people are walking around in pain. That’s the big picture.

I promote that we’re the wellness product. Someone like my husband who needs mega high doses of CBD chip away at any of his pain or his anxiety. He needs massive doses. While he uses my product because he likes it and we have tons of it always around the house. For true treatment, Todd needs higher doses. That’s when I recommend people to use a more medicinal product. You use something that’s in pills or droppers where you can get super mega high doses in small amounts. It’s the people who are healthy that are looking to feel better or the mom who’s anxious or can’t sleep because she’s stressed about bills. I don’t want to stereotype moms, dads but I relate to the moms’ struggle. For a lot of people who like that glass of wine at night, we’ve often found that using CBD or making a cup of CBD has taken away that need for the mommy juice as some people call it because they’re able to get the shoulders to go down from their ears to back where they’re supposed to be by using Daily Habit. That’s also a great option. It’s replacing alcohol for a lot of people, which is great because alcohol then affects your quality of sleep and then you start this vicious cycle. It’s for people who need a bit of help to get through their day. That’s all of us at this moment.

Back to humility. We don’t get more points in heaven because we try to do it on our own and things that do help that are not addictive or habit-forming. The name of the product or the company is called Daily Habit but this is not a habit-forming substance.

No, it’s not habit-forming but it’s a habit that you can be proud of. It’s something that’s fine. If you want to add this to your coffee every single day, a couple of times a day, you are fine and safe. Important, CBD is different than traditional marijuana. CBD will not get you stoned, high or give you the munchies, which are the three questions.

There’s no THC in CBD.

There are minute amounts. Full spectrum CBD can have up to 0.3% THC or less for it to be considered legal. These plants are grown to max out at that amount. Our product, depending on which production run, it does have amounts of THC that show but not enough to affect you in any psychoactive way. It’s enough to make the CBD more effective.

I’m curious about what have you seen in the grow world? Have things changed radically? In the last election slate, more states have become, “THC is either recreationally legal or not criminal,” and Schedule 1, it’s likely under the current administration that they’ll be at least a discussion beyond the House of Representatives about declassifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug. Are you seeing anything in the grow world that is interesting?

I am and living in Massachusetts for those six months. Massachusetts has fully recreational marijuana is completely legal. In the time that we were living there, we had around three dispensaries all within fifteen minutes of our house, which nothing is close to us where we live and it was three dispensaries. You’re able to grow your own plants. I was in the garden. You’re able to have a couple of plants per adults in the household. I was growing six plants to learn. I’ve never gotten to have that quality time with the garden to learn the growth cycle and understand the plant, even though it’s not the plants we use for my own product. It was for personal use and to watch it grow and to learn about the cycle at this hands-on level was amazing.

What it does financially for states and counties and towns is unreal. There’s so much more work that needs to be done. As we continue to legalize it, we need to take accountability of the people who are still behind bars for working with the product that is becoming legal. That’s something that I feel strongly about whether it’s working through the Innocence Project or elsewhere. It’s insane that the product that I’m working with or that I’m playing in the dirt within Massachusetts has people sitting behind bars here in New York. It’s a real systemic issue. As the regulations get looser and hopeful, it’s going to have a more positive effect on the people who suffered negative consequences of working with these plants.

The ultimate goal of CBD is to help your body maintain homeostasis. Share on X

That’s a topic that we won’t address at the moment. The depth of that is staggering. It’s difficult to make sense of that. It’s an involved discussion about how it is that we move forward as a nation to be better. They can’t erase the past. There’s no doing that. There’s no making it right by somebody that was arrested for something years ago and has spent time in prison for an activity that is now legal in many places but there is the opportunity to do something now to arrest that situation itself from perpetuating. We’re going to see things unfold. The big picture with this is that this is something that has a lot of stigma and stereotype associated with it.

I imagine you, every chance you get to speak about it for one person to even hear this and go, “Maybe I’ll look into that a little more. Maybe I’ll try that and see. Maybe it’s better than having a couple of glasses of wine before bed or maybe it’s better than another cup of coffee to keep me going through the day, which only ramps up my anxiety or eating something that makes me feel better but ultimately inflames my body that I can’t walk or run or asleep.” There are better ways to do stuff. I applaud the fact that you did something about this when you realize that what you were looking for wasn’t there. On behalf of all entrepreneurs everywhere, well done. I love this conversation and thank you for being a guest on the show.

Thank you for having me. This was great.

You’ll be able to find out more about Daily Habit. It’s DailyHabitCBD.com. You can check all that out. I have a daily habit of my own that is awaking habit that I like to think of as a ritual. I started it many years ago and I’m going to remind myself and everybody who is reading, about that. We get a chance if we’re lucky to wake up. We all did. This wouldn’t be happening if we didn’t all wake up but it wasn’t guaranteed last night when we went to bed that we would get to wake up. I didn’t get a contract for that. Did you, Brooke?

Not yet. I’m still waiting.

I’m a former lawyer. I’m always curious where they think it gets to that agreement. The chance and the prospect of getting to wake up again tomorrow is not an ordinary thing. It’s a blessing, it’s special. It’s something we can feel grateful for. I’ve got my shirt on that says I love my life. I’m looking at this brand-new copy of The I Love My Life Challenge Workbook which launched and gotten into stores. It’s several years ago that I first gave up an old habit. My old habit was I put my feet on the floor in the morning and I would grunt and bemoan, even for a couple of seconds that I had to do what I was about to do. Start a day I wasn’t excited about. Working a job I wasn’t thrilled doing. Feel as though I was selling myself short, selling out even for the money.

Being a lawyer for me at that time was successful financially but ultimately it was this energy and a mindset that, “This is a drag but I’m a warrior.” I wouldn’t sit in that too long. I had kids and now responsibilities. I stand up, get in the shower, get a cup of coffee and start my commute into Manhattan. It put me in the hospital at a certain point. With what felt like a real cardiac event, which wasn’t, it was an anxiety attack, a panic attack and something had to change at that moment. I didn’t know what that looked at all.

I committed to doing one small thing differently. A couple of weeks after that, I committed that when I put my feet on the floor to start the day, the first thing that I would say and feel was love. I wanted to feel love for my life. It was the result of watching late night, couldn’t get to sleep, watch this Jerry Maguire movie again and this wonderful scene where Jerry has a mentor, Dicky Fox. Dicky is talking about his life and how he’s had a lot more as many failures as he’s had successes but he loved his life. He loved his wife.

He wanted to impart to Jerry that was a form of success that we didn’t have to settle for but that we were blessed to be able to have. I thought it made so much sense to me. I got up that next morning. I put my feet on the floor and instead of my habit of grunting or cursing, I said I love my life. That was the first time I did that. Several years later and it spawned a TED Talk and a book and a lot of other things. I believe in habits broken and daily habits. Waking daily, all day long habits that we consciously create. You’ve been a perfect guest for us to have that discussion. I wish you the best and I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Everybody, if you’d like to share this episode with somebody that you think might benefit, maybe it’s somebody that might be open to the conversation around CBD or anything else, please do that. If you haven’t subscribed, we’d love to have you join our community and you can leave a comment. We’re always happy to get your feedback as well. For now, I’ll say ciao. 

 

Important Links

• The I Love My Life Challenge Workbook
• www.DailyHabitCBD.com

 

About Brooke Alpert

Brooke Alpert, M.S., R.D., C.D.N. is a certified holistic cannabis practitioner, a nationally recognized nutrition expert and a best-selling author.

Brooke’s interest in cannabis, particularly in CBD came from trying to help her husband manage his debilitating autoimmune disease. Seeing what CBD could do for her husband, Brooke brought CBD into her private practice and saw many of her clients overall wellness improve.

Her clients positive reaction lead Brooke to go back to school to become a certified holistic cannabis practitioner. Having to navigate her husband and her clients through all the options and seeing how so many of the products out there were not adequate, lead Brooke to create her own brand of CBD products, called Daily Habit.

Brooke’s nutrition and cannabis expertise has lead her to be featured on national television regularly including, Good Morning America, The Doctor Oz Show, The Today Show, Access Hollywood and more. She was named one of the new up and coming stars in the beauty and health field in W Magazine and has been quoted and featured extensively in both national and international magazines including People, Shape, Glamour, Town & Country, Tatler and more.

Brooke received her Masters of Science at New York University and completed her training at Mt. Sinai Hospital in affiliation with NYU. She is an active member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Brooke completed The Holistic Cannabis Academy’s program to become a cannabis practitioner in 2018.