Far 2 Fabulous

Unmasking Hay Fever: A Holistic Guide to Relief and Wellness

June 20, 2024 • Julie Clark & Catherine Chapman • Episode 24

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Can hay fever be the hidden culprit behind your sleepless nights and constant sniffles? Join us on this insightful episode of Far Too Fabulous as Julie and I unravel the complexities of hay fever, its triggers, and how it can be interconnected with other inflammatory conditions like eczema and asthma. Discover practical steps to manage those annoying symptoms and learn about holistic approaches that could make a world of difference.

We'll take you through the science behind histamine and how it wreaks havoc on your body, causing itchiness, redness, and even gastrointestinal issues. From simple habits like washing your hands and face to more advanced treatments like nasal irrigation and over-the-counter antihistamines, we cover it all. Plus, we highlight the importance of addressing nutritional needs to boost your body’s ability to clear histamine effectively.

Ever thought fresh ginger or a sprinkle of turmeric could be your new best friends? Explore natural remedies and dietary secrets that can help alleviate hay fever symptoms. Learn about the histamine-reducing properties of quercetin, found in everyday foods like apples and onions, and the immune-modulating power of vitamins C and D. We also offer creative ways to incorporate anti-inflammatory foods into your diet, ensuring you have all the knowledge and tools to combat hay fever and embrace your fabulous self!

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For more information about Julie Clark Nutrition, click HERE
For more information about Catherine Chapman, click HERE

We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous hosted by Julie and.

Speaker 2:

Catherine, join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some feistiness, inspiration, candid chats and humour as we journey together towards empowered well-being. Let's dive in. Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Far Too Fabulous and today we are going to be on topic. We're going to be talking about things that are happening right now and in my household. That is, hay fever. I don't know if that's happening in your household, but I really feel like it's increasingly happening everywhere to many more people, so that we thought we would start to talk about this today. I know that the uh, the weather's not caught up with summer, but but the pollen count certainly has, and I knew that julie would have lots to say about this too. Isn't that right, julie?

Speaker 1:

of course, when you said do you know anything about hay fever? Oh yes, it's interesting though, isn't it that, yeah, like you say, the summer hasn't caught up, but the pollen counts high. Yeah, I find that really weird and I don't necessarily understand why that happens, but yeah it's, the pollen count is definitely high. So what's been going on in your house?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, snotty noses, big, they all look like they've been punched in the eyes. Terrible, sleeping as well at night time, really blocked up and sniffly, and absolutely exhausted, imagining what's going on in their bodies, constantly fighting this and then not being able to sleep properly. And so for me, the other thing is that I am feeding them antihistamines, and I hate doing that. I hate giving the medication, especially when I know that there are other things that we could be doing all the way around it, even if we still give them antihistamines. I know that there's so much more we can be doing yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker 1:

It's a good thing to pick up on the feeling tired actually because or the exhaustion, because a lot of people don't necessarily. If they haven't experienced having hay fever, they don't necessarily connect those two and they just think it's the rise of watery or they're a bit sneezy in the workplace or at school. I think the the tiredness needs to be factored in, because the immune system is dealing with a massive inflammatory response and that that takes a lot of work and it is exhausting. And then, of course, you've got the symptoms keeping you awake as well, on top of that immune response and the energy it draws. So, yeah, I always feel sorry for the kids doing exams who have hay fever. Yeah, it's bad timing. You know it's not good, is it?

Speaker 1:

There's up to a third of people suffer from hay fever, so it's really really common. It's actually called seasonal allergic rhinitis. Anything with an itis on the end is inflammation, so it's part of the inflammatory family. So there is a connection with things like eczema, asthma, hay fever, food intolerances. And the one that usually stands out for me are the people that are really sensitive to any chemicals or smells. You know they can smell a cigarette a mile off. They can smell when a room's being cleaned. I'm one of these people. When I come into a room, if someone's got one of those plug-in scented things, that's an issue for me. That triggers all sorts of responses in my body.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, that's interesting, yeah, so so chances are, if somebody is suffering from hay fever, that they may have other other things that they have to deal with, like like your itchy skin or eczema or wheezing asthma.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, any any of those inflammatory conditions. So if you've got anybody in your family that's got an inflammatory condition, even if it isn't hay fever, it still comes under that umbrella of that inflammation in the body and that can be caused by a genetic predisposition for your body to be overexcited, with the inflammatory response producing too much histamine out of your system, which we'll talk about in a minute. Or it could be other factors involved, because we know that gut health is linked here. We know that we need certain nutrients, so it becomes much more of a holistic approach when we're looking at inflammatory conditions it's unlike my body not to be over excited about anything, but I mean, I'm very lucky that I have.

Speaker 2:

I literally only ever suffered from hay fever for one season when I was a teenager. I don't know, I imagine hormones probably had something to do with this, but I remember clearly suddenly suffering from it just just for one summer, and and then you were fine, yeah, and it never happened again yeah, so it could have been that the body was busy doing something else at that time.

Speaker 1:

Maybe there was a lacking of some nutrients, because hormones take a lot of b6 and b6 is important for the pathways of how you deal with inflammation, so that could be connected off in other directions yeah, exactly, but hay fever is is not just being allergic to hay I. I think we ought to point that out. Yeah, I wasn't rolling around in the hay.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

It's pollen from trees, grasses, plants and mould. Now, mould is another subject that we could go into, because this is quite a big issue for a lot of people. But mould can cause havoc in the body. So, yeah, mould can cause havoc in the body. So, yeah, mold. If you've got people in your house that have got allergic situations going on, you need to check to see if there's any mold anywhere that's interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

and what about things like um, like dust and mites? I suppose these things are around all of the time.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, so they're not necessarily seasonal, yeah, yeah but you can have very similar symptoms to hay fever when you've just got an allergy to something. Yeah, so I always remember the situation when I first started work and I worked in the construction industry and I went to work in a porter cabin on a building site and the guy that I was sharing the office with used links. Now I still, to this day, cannot be in the presence of someone who is wearing links.

Speaker 2:

Does the links effect not have the right effect on you.

Speaker 1:

I am so sensitive to it. It triggers immediately. I get kind of like an itchy feeling inside my body and it makes me wheezy, it makes my eyes water, it makes me sneeze, so the same symptoms that you would see in hay fever. It's the same response in the body. Yeah, so if I've come into contact again, like if I went into a room and someone's got a glade, it's a glade plug-in, yeah. Yeah, I can smell it straight away and it irritates my body.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I suppose because they're more chemical-based as well, isn't it that you're reacting to? It's funny Lynx has a whole different effect on me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, depending on who's wearing it, anyway, exactly. But my son came home with a bottle of Lynx spray the other day and he said is it, is this okay for me to use? I think a friend gave it to him or something, and so, apart from the fact that I am really big on the using natural stuff, so that deodorants, that is another subject, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

goodness me, why would we put all those chemicals under our arm, where we've got a major part of our lymphatic system anyway? That's another subject. But he said is it all right for me to use? And I said no, because of the chemicals and got him to look at the label, but also because I said to him I am super allergic to it. Yeah, yeah, the lynx effect. That's funny.

Speaker 2:

I remember that advert from years ago now see, there we go, that marketing again works so well and the other one was the women's one, the body.

Speaker 1:

What was the body spray impulse? Oh yeah, oh, my goodness me the same. Is it made by the same company? Because, yeah, so I couldn't handle that, or being near anywhere yeah, anywhere with lynx.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my god, when you talked about that I could feel that scratchiness in my throat. Yeah, as you walked into the um, into the girls toilets in secondary school, everybody been spraying it same, I suppose, with all those kind of aerosol deodorants yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

I know that my daughter has a big issue with it at school because she's following her mum's inflammatory pathways there, but there are things that you can do to support it, which I've done for years now, and I don't really suffer from hay fever now, but I do sometimes get those allergies, like. The train is the worst If I'm on a busy train and the men are wearing anything like those links.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a nightmare journey for me. So, yeah, if you know that you've got that inflammatory picture within your family or yourself where eczema could go to asthma, can go to hay fever, all these things tend to be linked and sometimes people have all of those things, so it is an inflammatory response in the body. So when we have hay fever fever we get basically the immune system will respond by increasing mucus production. So we know that when we've got hay fever and it increases or encourages the dilation of blood vessels and so we get this kind of issue on our nerve endings. So we get itchy, we get mucus production, everything kind of you know liquid comes out of us, doesn't it our eyes, our nose, but it's just your.

Speaker 1:

Your mucus membranes are a key part of your immune system and they're trying to help you so that inflammatory response happens, and histamine is involved in that. So strap yourself in people.

Speaker 1:

Is histamine? What is histamine? So histamine is a chemical that was released by our white blood cells in our bloodstream when the immune system is triggered with an allergen. So yeah, you're quite right. It could be dust all year round, it could be mold, it could be a glade plug-in, it could be links, it could be all the pollens and there's different pollens at different times of the year and foods can also result in this histamine production.

Speaker 1:

So it's really important because it does protect us against infection. It regulates certain things in the gut. It acts as a neurotransmitter. So we don't necessarily want to shut down histamine completely. But once histamine has been activated, it needs to be cleared by the body. We have an enzyme called dao in our gut, so we have to look at the gut. We come back to that. We have an enzyme which basically clears the histamine out of our system. But lots of people have issues on those pathways. Plus, they are reliant on certain nutrients. So if we're pumping out all this histamine but we're lowering certain nutrients that help clear it out, then we're going to hold on to the histamine in our body which is going to continuously trigger the mucous membranes to do that good stuff that they do. And then we get, yeah, itchiness on the skin, redness, hives, even eczema, rashes in our gastrointestinal tract. That's a hard word to say, isn't it? Put your teeth back in gastrointestinal tract.

Speaker 1:

We can get things like acid reflux sometimes. We don't always connect those.

Speaker 2:

No, I wouldn't have, yeah, I wouldn't have even think, thought about that as a as a symptom yeah, because histamine is produced from the mast cells.

Speaker 1:

Where are the mast cells in the gut when most of the immune system is housed? So we can get symptoms diarrhea, constipation, nausea, vomiting. Then we get respiratory issues, so we get asthma cough. A cough is a common one. You can just get a constant dry cough and you're like where's that come from? That's an allergic reaction, nasal congestion and then in the vascular system there's an impact there. So that's interesting. So we can get things like, um, feeling dizzy, fainting, lower blood pressure, migraines and headaches. So quite often people with hay fever will also get a headache. Yeah, it can change your heartbeat and, in neurological side of things, insomnia, anxiety, memory and concentration issues those poor kids doing their exams right, yeah yeah, and you're not surprised, are you?

Speaker 2:

you've got all of that going on. Even if you've like when you've got a cold, you know you're not not firing on all, all cylinders, but this and this is almost like never ending through the summer, depending on what you're allergic to exactly so.

Speaker 1:

It's not just a case of oh hay fever. I think is is treated as some kind of minor condition. Yeah, it can be incredibly impactful on someone's life?

Speaker 2:

yeah, no, it is. It's certainly at the moment. It's certainly not minor in my household. Um, so some of the things that we have been doing just sort of day to day are things like making sure the girls have washed their hands, have washed their face when they come in, have taken their clothes off that they've had on all day, showered perhaps like washed their hair. So that's a big thing that we do at home. Things like nasal irrigation is actually something that we have in the house. I know it's not very pleasant and I know many people are not a fan the girls really are not a fan but the kind of the flushing through of potentially pollen or whatever you're allergic to?

Speaker 1:

Do you do it with salt, do you do?

Speaker 2:

a salt flush?

Speaker 1:

Yes, whatever you're allergic to do you do it with salt. Do you do a salt flush? Yes, yeah, it's so good because what salt does is it tells the mucous membrane that it acts as an antiviral, anti-inflammatory okay product anyway, but it also tells the mucous membranes that they don't need to keep producing mucus, so it's really good for sinus issues, yeah, when you've got a cold.

Speaker 2:

So threefold, clears it all through so you can breathe, and then calms everything down. That's really interesting, yeah. So not much fun to do, I have to say, but very effective and is natural. So obviously I've said that we have been using over-the-counter antihistamines, which have been working, but I think they probably they have their limits as well. You can also get things like nasal corticosteroids to reduce the inflammation, or you can get eye drops. There's an abundance of things. For me, it's got its place because it helps the girls right there, right then then, but it really feels like we're just plastering over the cracks and not dealing with the problem exactly that's exactly what it's doing, and there's nothing wrong with needing to use these in the short term or when the pollen count is particularly high.

Speaker 1:

But if you understand that there are nutrients involved in how your body's dealing with that the guts involved there are certain things that you can put into place as part of your general lifestyle and health that will limit either the production of histamine or will help you clear the excess histamine, and therefore you don't have to rely on all those medications because, at the end of the day they are, they're chemicals. They're going to have side effects. One of the main side effects is drowsiness, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, and you have to be really careful which ones you're taking. We have both in the house and do have to be careful which one I'm giving them before they go to school.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you do, don't you? You have to make sure you read the labels.

Speaker 1:

read the labels, and then the other thing that you can do is to you can use food to help calm the inflammation, because there are foods that have an anti-inflammatory aspect to them, so you can use those. You can use foods and nutrients to help regulate the immune system and then, like you said, you can put things in place like barriers, vaseline up your nose, washing your clothes, wearing glasses. We weren't really a fan of just stay indoors and avoid everything, were we?

Speaker 2:

no, that was one of the things. When I was having a look came up and it's yeah, shut. Shut all windows and doors and don't go out or put a mask on, and I feel like we've probably done enough of that. So, yes, we were after some more proactive ways of dealing with it. Actually, another very interesting thing that I that I came across while I was looking for it was allergy shots. So this was basically getting an injection of whatever you were allergic to, little and often, so that you could gradually desensitize the body to the allergen which was, which was interesting. I didn't realize that existed and it would be a proactive way of dealing with it. And that, interestingly, is what honey does. And I know we'll come on to onto foods and stuff now and you can start to tell us exactly what foods would be really good, but in my way of thinking, I knew that honey was something that you could use to help your immune system.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, it's a great product absolutely, and I knew that honey was something that you could use to help your immune system.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, it's a great product absolutely, and I knew there was a good thing for hay fever, and I think that I just assumed that it was a good thing for symptom relief, and so actually, what I didn't realize was that what it's doing is giving you that shot of pollen for want of a better word and being able to desensitize your body to that, and so we were talking just now about that, and what did you say about honey and and it being available or not right now?

Speaker 1:

yeah. So before I say that, just to say that if you, if you use honey, it has to be honey that's local to your area, that's that's being fed or they're using the pollens that you've got an issue with. So it has to be local. You can't just buy your honey from the supermarket and think that's going to be all right. That's probably goes without saying. But let's just you know, make sure everyone knows, at the moment the bees honey is not always ready at this at this time of year, so it's a little bit early. So you you'll want to buy the honey in preparation for next year or use the honey now, right right through, and it just be part of your you know your your food intake good quality honey that is not being pasteurized.

Speaker 1:

If it's been pasteurized, it is. It's destroyed, everything that's good in it and a lot of the supermarket honey is unfortunately not honey. Yeah, this is another big issue when we buy honey and you'll know if you're someone that's bought local honey or honey that's been made and not been pasteurized. The difference in the taste is huge. A lot of the honey that we have in the shops is actually fructose syrup it's really hard, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

because, I mean, you would think it's, it's naturally occurring. I'm doing something good for my body, so I'm gonna buy honey, and then, yeah, you feel like you find out. There are even deeper levels to this yeah, this.

Speaker 1:

This is the problem with the food industry. Is that because the food industry is only about making money, in order for them to increase their profit margins and their yield, they add other things to it. I had this conversation recently with a client about maple syrup, because I'd suggested using maple syrup as an alternative sweetener. And then the client at ball one of the maple syrups from the supermarket. I asked them to send me a photo because I said they're not all the same and this particular one I can't remember the brand now it's a really common one in the supermarkets. You've got to get a hundred percent pure maple syrup, otherwise it's fructose syrup. And what do we know about fructose syrup? It directly burdens the liver and turns the liver fatty. It's a massive, massive issue fructose syrup there's another podcast sugar liver, yeah, yeah exactly.

Speaker 1:

I did touch on it a bit when I did my tribute to michael mosley. But yeah, it is a big issue. But the unfortunate thing is is that you can't always trust that the food that you buy is is actually what it says on the bloody labels. It's's so frustrating, but honey, honey, we know is a big issue. So, yeah, buy local honey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, go to your local greengrocers or something. It might be a little bit more expensive, so you can eke it out and just have it little, and often you can almost have it like a medicine if you like and just have a little bit of it. I'd far prefer it on a big hunk of sourdough myself, but anyway, take it any way you like and, as with lots of things that we are going to be talking about through this episode, it's not taking them right now, like when the symptoms are at their worst. It's introducing them into your daily lifestyle, almost so that they are there to support you and that you are being proactive rather than reactive yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it's probably not going to help you right now, but it might well help you next year. So when you consume the honey that the bees have used their pollen in your area, that you've got an issue with it means that you're having small amounts of it going into your system and then the immune system starts. It's like training your immune system. It starts to recognize it and that's similar to the shots that you're talking about. It's like it's putting it in there and just saying to the body a little amount's gone in, you deal with it, and then it doesn't have such a big overreaction when it does come in next time. Yeah, so, yeah, okay, what else have we got? Must talk about ginger? Well, always.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, tell us some other things that we can use then.

Speaker 1:

So ginger is. You could use ginger as a symptom reliever. So the best way that I would use ginger is to put it in a juicer with an apple, because apple's also got things in that can help. Apple's got that word that I can't say pectin, no, the q1, quercetin, that one yeah, come back to quercetin in a minute. But yeah, I like that. Yeah, I can't say that word. I just said that word, julie. So ginger has the ability to slow the histamine response, so it's acting to stop the amount of histamine being produced in the first place, and then it has anti-inflammatory properties, hoorah. So, yeah, if you want to get fresh ginger, don't use, like the spice rack ginger Proper fresh root ginger. Put it through the juicer or in a smoothie as long as it breaks, because it can be quite, you know, fibrous.

Speaker 2:

You want it to break up really well.

Speaker 1:

And then I like to put it in. So this is my favourite hay fever prevention lolly. Okay, so this is a good one for kids. So you blend pineapple yeah, a quarter of a pineapple, put that in the blender. Pineapple's got bromelain in, which is an anti-inflammatory, with some mango, also full of antioxidants, so anti-inflammatory. A kiwi incredibly high in vitamin C, which is an actual antihistamine. With the fresh ginger, whiz it up, put some water in or something. If you need to make it a bit more liquidy, put it in your lolly molds and freeze. Done, you've got your. Wow, that sounds amazing. You've got your hay fever lolly recipe right there that's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Yeah, because you'd said so. Pineapple, you'd spoke we'd spoken about earlier.

Speaker 1:

You said was a was a good one for hay fever yeah, so in hay fever complexes like bio care do a really good hay fever supplement called quercetin complex. It's got quercetin in it because that acts on the histamine pathways and it takes excess histamine out. It's got bromelain in, which is in pineapple. That's also acts to help the gut but that acts as an anti-inflammatory Nettles, which we will come on to in a minute. And vitamin C because vitamin C is your natural antioxidant and so if your diet is low in foods that contain vitamin C lots of children's diets are low in foods that contain vitamin C you're not going to have your antihistamine nutrient in your body are you?

Speaker 2:

no, absolutely. And again, this is a, you know, a call to to have these in our diet regularly, not just suddenly when we need them. And and we've talked about how, how sad we are that this isn't necessarily something that we will just get from the, from our diet, from the food that we eat. So perhaps looking at, like, what supplements you're taking and at what time of year, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

And then if you are focused on your anti-inflammatory pathways in your body and you're using foods that are anti-inflammatory, it's going to help to modulate the immune system. One of the other really important modulators for the immune system is vitamin d. Again, I always say that you should test your vitamin d levels and know what they are, so important. It's like a hormone, but it regulates the immune system. So if you're someone that gets your hay fever kicking early you know some people get it earlier in the year, like march, april time. You've just come off the back of the winter. If your vitamin d is low because you've not had sunshine and your hay fever symptoms are high, you might want to check that out.

Speaker 2:

Oh, interesting yeah and it's about yeah, looking at yourself as a whole exactly.

Speaker 1:

so some other things that can help. Garlic and onion both contain quercetin, Quercetin, so yeah, quercetin. Say it together, so quercetin also can help increase the production of white blood cells, which can be really helpful. Again, it's about modulating things, but quercetin helps to take the histamine levels right down, so quercetin is a really important one. We can't do anti-inflammatory without speaking about omega-3. Okay, why?

Speaker 2:

is that.

Speaker 1:

So omega-3. I love that. Why is that? Why is that, julie Duh? Omega-3 is. We have the need for essential fats in our body. Omega-3 is one of them. We live in an omega-6 dominant world. Omega-6 is pro-inflammatory, omega-3 is anti-inflammatory. The balance between those two is crucial to how much inflammation we trigger in our body. So we need omega-3. Omega-3 comes from oily fish is the main one. Three comes from oily fish is the main one. Other sources that aren't as good, though. I have to say that on the vegan, vegetarian side, the conversion has to go through another step, so it's much harder. So if you're following a vegetarian diet but you can, you can come around to the fact of taking a fish oil supplement. If you can manage that, it's better. Yeah for the omega-3. Otherwise you're gonna go. You're gonna have to do your chia seeds, your flax seeds and your algae to get to get omega-3, but it's gonna have to go through an extra conversion. It's harder for the body does that do?

Speaker 2:

do we need to take more of it then with the chia and the flax seeds and things?

Speaker 1:

yeah, you do. Yeah, unfortunately you're gonna have to intake a lot of that and the supplements is good if you're taking so yes, because you can concentrate the amount so you can get vegan omega-3 supplements, which normally come from algae, and because they it's concentrated, there's a lot more in there it allows for the conversion not being as good. Okay, so yeah, but omega-3 is a key part of an anti-inflammatory diet which one is it that we don't often have in our?

Speaker 1:

our western diet is it three or the six? No, it's three, so we live in a dominant six. Yeah, um, because, yeah, we need fats. We're exposed to um a lot of omega-6 fats in our, in our diet, so we've got those covered, so the omega-6 are fine, but those are pro-inflammatory and we want the anti-inflammatory. There are a need for omega-6 as well, yeah, but the ratio between the two of them is really we've messed it up a bit like the gut microbiome.

Speaker 1:

We've messed that up. We've messed up our omega-3 omega-6 ratio, and then we wonder why we've got all these symptoms yeah, no, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

So you just said about the uh, the microbiome, and I know that that's super, super important in all of this as well yeah, we can't ignore support in the gut in any allergic reaction, because where's the most of your immune system?

Speaker 1:

it's in your gut. It's in your gut and where are the mast cells?

Speaker 2:

I've been listening, people have you. Where are?

Speaker 1:

the mast cells. They're in there too, and where's the system income from? Comes from the mast cells julie in the gut, I love that you just passed your gut test.

Speaker 2:

I love it, amazing. So we are going to be talking about this at some point in the future. I'm stumbling over this because I can't remember which order these are all going in. I think next week we're going to be talking about pre and probiotics, so this is a place for our probiotics, is that right?

Speaker 1:

Yes and no. Yeah it is, it's a little bit more complex. So when we're looking at the gut, when we're looking at allergies, then we've got to look at the balance of the microbiome. We've got to look at the inflammation that's being produced. We've got to look at inflammation markers in the gut and we've got to look at do we need to get rid of bad bacteria? Do we need to boost the good bacteria? Is there an imbalance between the two? Do they need the soil to be sorted we spoke about that in that episode or do we need to put the guys in in the first place because they're not there? So it depends on the individual a lot of the time. But it certainly wouldn't do any harm to put pre and probiotics in if you've got hay fever, because a lot of people with inflammatory type conditions often have a gut problem and if you know that you're hyper mobile, then you know that you're more likely to have gut problems and you're more likely to have inflammatory conditions.

Speaker 2:

So they kind of all connect anyway right, absolutely, and again, just using these things not all of the time again we're going to talk about this next week not necessarily all of the time, but regularly in your, in your diet, to support you and even if with, like you you've said, about hypermobility and maybe Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and things like that Just using it to really support, because I mean, you're kind of you're on the back foot with those things anyway. So being able to have things like pre and probiotics and your healthy diet to support you, you're then winning.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Turmeric. I must mention turmeric for anti-inflammatory we can't ever talk about inflammatory or anti-inflammatory without that can we no, because it has the active ingredient curcumin. Another one of those fun words right? Which guess what it does? It reduces the release of histamine and therefore calms inflammation. So I think it's quite easy to get turmeric in again. You can buy proper root turmeric and you could put that in your smoothie. You only need a little bit.

Speaker 1:

It will stain everything if it's a if it's a really good brand, it's going to stain everything. But yeah, add it because it doesn't really have that much flavor. When I see kids with like serious eczema, for example, turmeric, we mix in with things like scrambled eggs, we put it in everything. We put it in the rice, in the pasta, when it, when it's cooking in the water, yeah, in order to get the turmeric in.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a great idea. I love that. Adding it to adding it to things. Yeah, I've never thought about putting in scrambled egg, so you can't really taste it.

Speaker 1:

No, you can't really taste it. And also because the the eggs are yellow anyway, it just makes them look even nicer. Yeah, put a bit of turmeric in, yeah, so yeah, scrambled eggs.

Speaker 2:

What else do you add it to?

Speaker 1:

I'm intrigued now. All sorts like if I was making some bread, yes, I could shove a tablespoon of turmeric in the bread machine With the flour and everything. Yeah, it gives it a little bit of a colour, but does that matter? No, no, we'd freak the kids out. But it would be good you could mix it in with porridge, oh yeah, but yeah, rice pasta, mashed potato. Oh yes, I was just thinking that, yeah, any sauce. Oh yes, I was just thinking that, yeah, any sauce, any sauce.

Speaker 2:

You're doing gravy and then when I sneak the sweet potato in the mashed potato, I can tell them it's turmeric and they won't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Unless it is, I'm pretty sure they don't listen to this. Anyway, I get that issue with my kids with mixing sweet potato in with mashed potato.

Speaker 1:

It's a no-brainer right, I think it. Yeah, why would you not do that? But yeah, do you get? Oh, can't we just have normal mashed potato? Yeah, glad it's not just me and my kids. I mentioned vitamin C, but this one is so good. So vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin. We go through it when we're stressed. We go through it when we're stressed. We go through it a lot anyway. Um, so, using high dose of vitamin c to bowel tolerance. So vitamin c will loosen the bowels. So this is a good one to know. For constipation, vitamin c will loosen the bowels. When you know, when you want to know how much vitamin c you need for what your body's going through at the time, you can take vitamin c to the point that your stools get loose and then you go back a dose, then that's your dose. So if you get tablets that are 500, um, 500 milligrams or a thousand milligrams, you can take one tablet every hour to to when you get bowel tolerance.

Speaker 1:

So you get loose stools and then you go back a tablet and then you know that's how much you need, that's brilliant.

Speaker 2:

That's a really good way. Again, we're empowering you to be able to do it yourself, that you don't have to rely on somebody else about what, what medications or what supplements you're doing and taking. I will just refer you back to julie's episode about supplements and where you get them from.

Speaker 1:

That's all I'm saying thank you for that little plug, but yes, I did do a thorough episode on that subject, just going back to how the body produces histamine and then clears it out. We need certain nutrients, so the b vitamins are crucial.

Speaker 1:

B vitamins, again, tend to be low in our system because they are water soluble and we use them when we're stressed and we don't often get enough, because b vitamins will come from the more healthier foods that maybe are missing, especially when talking about children. Whole grains, the b vitamins okay. Yeah, b6 is a key one for hormones. So if we've only got a certain amount of b6 in our body and our body's choosing between, do I need to grow and develop this person or do I need to deal with a, an allergic reaction? Yeah, it's going to choose the growing development. Yeah, and we can only draw on so much. So b6 is important b2, b5, b vitamins generally, vitamin c, magnesium and zinc. You need those in order to maintain this whole pathway. As you can imagine, they needed a lot in other places.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm just when you've said said magnesium, I know, for ladies of a certain age, I I know that magnesium is just the most wonderful thing in the whole of the world at the moment. And so when it's being dragged off, and so certainly I was supplementing more with that while I was doing the marathon training and things like that. So if you're very, very physical, the magnesium is being pulled off in those directions and not necessarily helping you out with your allergies.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and when we're under stress and our adrenal glands are producing our stress hormones.

Speaker 2:

What no one's under stress, julie ever. I mean you're totally talking to the wrong audience.

Speaker 1:

The thing that happens is that we deplete zinc, magnesium. The B vitamins go very, very quickly, all the ones you've just said, all the ones you've just said, all the ones I just said. And the other thing that will really deplete these is alcohol, oh and caffeine.

Speaker 2:

Oh, now she's done it. That's it, I'm leaving so.

Speaker 1:

But if you're someone that's really suffering with with your hay fever at the moment, if you know that caffeine is going to impact those pathways and steal those nutrients, then you might just go. Do you know what? I'd rather not have the caffeine at the moment and allow my system to be able to clear excess histamine out. So, anyway, the choice is yours.

Speaker 2:

You can choose that is it isn't it, though you have. You have the choice you either suffer or you make the necessary changes to be more comfortable. And again, though, often as human beings, often as female human beings of a certain age, we don't make the comfortable choices, for whatever reason. No, we don't. So please make the comfortable choices for you right now. This is so interesting. What, again, on a day-to-day basis? Where can we get those b vitamins? Where can we get those c vitamins, as well as supplementation?

Speaker 1:

just eat a whole food diet. It's not that, it's not rocket science. Just eat your whole foods. You need to have a really good intake of vegetables and fruits so you access those nutrients and get those vitamins and minerals in and you help support your gut microbiome. If you have the fiber going in, yes. Then if you look at your protein quality which is important, yeah. If it's coming from processed foods, that's not going to do you any favors. Your protein quality is important. Getting food in that gives you your omega-3 is really really key. Keeping sugar low why would we want to keep sugar low? What does sugar do in the body? Ramps up inflammation. So if we're already in an inflammatory state you know because we've got our eyes are watering, our nose is running, we're everything else then we want to calm inflammation.

Speaker 2:

It piles it all on top, doesn't it? I was thinking about you, talking about, like the, the sorts of any processed stuff that we are ingesting and then. So, then again, your body is is busy sorting all these chemicals and stuff out that we've just brought in, so of course, it's not able to continue to help you with that other inflammatory response exactly, and we've got to touch on liver health here, because the phase two detoxification through the liver is often compromised for those people and I'm one of those that have inflammatory conditions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because it makes everything in phase one. The body makes things more toxic before it converts it and takes out of the system.

Speaker 2:

So that's another important one yeah, so another major reason why we need to reduce sugar and look after the poor old liver indeed so hay fever sufferers, there's lots of foods that you can eat and use, which we've given you.

Speaker 1:

Any of the fruits and vegetables are going to help. The colors of the rainbow, because they all have anti-inflammatory properties. We need to look at our gut health, make sure that's supported, but using other things like barriers your nose, put glasses on any of those kind of things are going to help. What else, in a summary, are we telling people to do? You can definitely take some supplements. Yeah, do the salt flush. I honestly think it's brilliant. Anything, even if you've got a cold, do the salt flush. Yeah, it's brilliant. If you, if you don't know how to do it, just put it into the google. Yeah, neti pots, hasn't it? Yeah, how to do a salt flush, and it will tell you exactly how to do it definitely put the salt in.

Speaker 2:

If you've ever done it without the salt, it's painful. Don't do just normal water. Um, yeah, we talked about local honey. We've talked, we touched on um nettle, um nettle leaf tea and supplements to help with um the symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so nettles can be really, really helpful. There's a homeopathic remedy that well leader do, well, well, leader w-e-l-e-d-a or a very well-known homeopathic company. They do an allergy I can't remember the name of it now, but they do a hay fever relief spray that uses homeopathic remedies. Homeopathic remedies are completely safe and they don't interact with anything. So, yeah, and I not give it a try.

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely, I was saying if it feels like the more sensible option to use a homeopathic remedy to combat something that's coming at you from nature, rather than sort of throwing chemicals and stuff at it yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

If you know that vitamin c and quercetin are going to help the body reduce inflammation, you stick some omega-3 in. That's going to be much better for your entire body than just putting an antihistamine in, because those nutrients are going to be working elsewhere as well and they're completely natural, so that makes sense. But yeah, nettles are a herb I suppose we would call them a herb and they have antihistamine properties as well, so a lot of hay fever supplements contain those. So quercetin, vitamin c, bromelain and nettle tends to be in those. For that reason, can we?

Speaker 2:

just go and collect nettles from the downs.

Speaker 1:

You can yeah, you can, yeah, you can make tea out of nettles that you would just, yeah, pick. We're not going to sting our mouths. You need some gloves. They don't sting. No, they don't sting when they're cooked either. So that's yeah, that's interesting. That's another thing to google.

Speaker 2:

Stinging nettles are amazing and I wonder if, because they're again, because they're, they're local to us, naturally occurring, it's even better yeah, you need to be extra careful with the washing of them, though.

Speaker 1:

Wouldn't you have all the dogs we got around here this?

Speaker 2:

is true, yeah, go further kind of at that level, aren't?

Speaker 1:

they, you know. So yeah be careful.

Speaker 2:

Be careful with that. Excellent. That's absolutely incredible, so I hope that that has been beneficial to you. I'm certainly going to implement a lot more for the girls and I hope there is a smaller pile of snotty tissues on the side of the bed in weeks to come in um, in weeks to come, as always, come and continue the conversation over in the far too fabulous facebook group. Let us know if you are suffering with hay fever, let us know what you do about it and let us know, if you have implemented some of these things, how you were getting on yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And just to conclude, stress management is really key here because stress ramps up the inflammatory processes in the body and if we're thinking about our teenagers going through exams who have got hay fever, then if we support them with the stress management side of things so that they're in parasympathetic nervous system, not sympathetic, it's going to help downregulate that inflammatory response.

Speaker 2:

And so you just saying that. So I'm now thinking like things like tapping, things like meditation, things like breath work yeah, to be able to bring you back down, just so your body can function normally?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And what's interesting about those nutrients that we've mentioned, like vitamin c, the b vitamin, zinc, magnesium are all needed to support the body when it's under stress.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that that also has a, which perhaps is why because I've we were. When we were talking about this, I was saying that I feel like it's on the increase, and so perhaps I certainly feel like stress is on the increase as well yeah, stress, the, the stress pandemic.

Speaker 1:

It's a pandemic in itself, isn't it stress?

Speaker 2:

yeah, it just means that the body is less able to cope with with everything else that's being thrown at it. So the same kind of allergens may well have been thrown at us for years and years and years, but suddenly, when we're stressed and and hopefully all the nutrients are off, trying to sort that out, it can't deal with everything else on top?

Speaker 1:

no, exactly. So then we go back to the four legs of our chair. Oh yeah, and the way that we can support our bodies if we can't? We can't always get rid of stress.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

And we don't always want to get rid of stress. But if we're struggling with day-to-day stress, we've got to put in mechanisms in place to help support our body.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, and if you are kind of in the midst of suffering with hay fever also, to give yourself a break of of suffering with hay fever also, to give yourself a break, just just rest and be able to give your body a chance to to uh, to battle against it yeah, because, at the end of the day, the same immune response is happening.

Speaker 1:

That happens when you get a bad cold, yeah, and so there's this. You know the hay fever being a minor illness, you just battle through and keep going. Actually, your body's doing a lot. The immune system is taking up loads of energy, loads of nutrients in order to deal with that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you would, wouldn't you? You take a day or two off of school or work if you had a cold, but as soon as somebody labels it as hay fever, you have to carry on. For some reason, exactly, yeah, okay, are we really going to go this time, or should we just start a whole another conversation?

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I didn't mean to. I just thought we needed to mention that because it's so important.

Speaker 2:

It's so important. We honestly, we really are going right now.

Speaker 1:

We're going now and we will see you in the Facebook group. Take care.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

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Speaker 1:

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