Both seasonal allergies and insomnia are signs that your body isn’t totally healthy, even if you eat well and exercise and care about your health.


Your body should be able to deal with pollen, grasses, etc. without causing any symptoms.


And your body should be able to sleep at least 7 hours a night.


In this episode, I’m going to explain what underlying health issues lead to seasonal allergies and sleep issues. And I’ll tell you some supplements that have helped me so I don’t have to take medication during allergy season.


You can order the supplements* from my Fullscript account to get 20% off.


Schedule a consultation to get started with the Complete Sleep Solution program so you can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently.


*Disclaimer: Dietary supplements are not intended to replace medical advice or treatment. They should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult a healthcare professional before use: It is important to consult with a healthcare professional before taking any dietary supplements, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or are taking any medications. 


00:00 Introduction

01:06 Personal Story: Summer Allergies

03:10 The Turning Point: Discovering Functional Lab Testing

04:01 Understanding the Root Causes

07:36 Effective Supplements for Allergy Relief

09:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts


Episode Transcript


Both seasonal allergies and insomnia are signs that your body isn't totally healthy. Even if you eat well and exercise and care about your health, your body should be able to deal with pollen and grasses, et cetera without causing any symptoms, and your body should be able to sleep at least seven hours a night.


In this episode, I'm going to explain what underlying health issues lead to seasonal allergies and sleep issues, and you want to listen to the whole episode because I'm going to tell you some supplements that have helped me so I don't have to take medication during allergy season anymore.


You're listening to the Sleep Detective Podcast, where you will learn why you can't sleep and how to fix it naturally. I am Martha Lewis. I've been a functional health and life coach for the past five years, and I've helped over 200 clients find and fix the root causes of their health issues so they can consistently sleep seven to nine hours without drugs and also reduce the severity of their seasonal allergies. I want to tell you that summer is my favorite time of year.


In Jackson Hole where I live, it's usually beautiful, bright blue skies. The mountains are lush and green with some snow on the top, and the temperature is usually perfect or in the mid eighties and dry. Very different than where I grew up in South Carolina where it was so hot and humid and miserable, and I remember I couldn't exercise outside after 9:00 AM. But there are three things that make Summer not as perfect as it should be. In Jackson, there are biting bugs like mosquitoes and black flies. There's sometimes wildfire smoke and there can be hay fever. Now, seasonal allergies happen for me in the summer here.


I know in other places they are happening right now. Which I'm recording this in April, so I know in the South and other more temperate places, they're happening a lot earlier. So when my son Parker was two, we went camping in Salmon, Idaho for a long weekend. It's this beautiful town by this beautiful river.


There's a lot of mountain biking there. And at this time I was still dealing with sleep issues because I hadn't learned about functional lab testing yet and my allergies. During this trip we're awful. I was sneezing. I was congested and had a runny nose. How does that happen? I had headaches. I was not sleeping.


I didn't want a mountain bike because I felt so miserable. I really just wanted to go home, so it was affecting my entire vacation. I went to the health food store there and tried three different supplements, but nothing helped. So I finally got some over-the-counter allergy medication. And I generally try to avoid drugs at all costs, but I was so miserable.


Now, I survived the rest of that trip and then came home and that's when allergy season started in Jackson. So I dealt with this for a couple months. That year. And then it was later that year that I learned about functional lab testing. I did some tests myself, and I found the underlying issues that were causing my sleep problems, and I later realized that many of them were also causing my seasonal allergies.


So one main one was that I had liver detox issues. I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't even tolerate alcohol anymore, so I wasn't drinking much, but I found out I had a parasite. Those pathogens in the gut release, a lot of toxins that your liver has to deal with. I had heavy metals like uranium, I had too much copper, which we need copper, but when there's too much, it becomes toxic and can lead to sleep issues.


So my liver and all of my detox organs were having to deal with all of these toxins and they couldn't handle it. And so since then I've learned that. Then adding something like pollen or grasses to an already toxic body, it just overflows what I call the toxin bucket. So. I use the same analogy with stress, where let's say we can handle a bucket full of toxins or a bucket full of stress.


And when that bucket gets full and starts overflowing, that's when our bodies can't handle it anymore. And so I already had all these toxins from heavy metals from the gut pathogens, and so then pollen and. Cottonwood and the grasses were just overflowing my toxin bucket. And so that's why my body was reacting so strongly to those things.


And we know that this shouldn't happen because not everyone deals with seasonal allergies. A lot of people can tolerate them just fine. They don't have hay fever and so. Even though I was a nutritionist, I worked in a health food store at the time, you know, I've been passionate about health For a long time, it was a sign that my body wasn't in balance, that there was something going on that I didn't realize.


And so liver detox issues were one of them. And then. That was also from gut health. And so the parasite had damaged my gut. It had led to food sensitivities and it leads to something called leaky gut where undigested food particles and toxins and things that should stay in the gut actually leak through the cell walls of the gut into the bloodstream and cause inflammation.


And so that was just adding more. Toxins to what was already going on in my body, and so part of the issue with my sleep and the seasonal allergies was that my gut wasn't healthy. Now what's interesting too is that high cortisol, which I had super high cortisol at night, so that was affecting my sleep.


And high cortisol in general can lead to histamine issues, which is histamine is what's happening when you know these toxins cause a release of histamine. And when the body can't clear it properly, that histamine builds up and causes the symptoms that we associate with. Seasonal allergies and hormone imbalance as well can lead to histamine issues and seasonal allergies.


So it turns out that all of these imbalances that were affecting my sleep were also causing my hay fever, and so the allergens aren't actually the problem. It's your body's ability to handle them. That is the problem. Now the good news is every year my hay fever gets better and better. So last year was actually the first time I didn't take any over the counter drugs to deal with allergies.


So now my son is almost nine, so last year he was eight. So since he was two from when he was eight, it got better every year. So I, in the beginning, like that first year that I told you about when I went to Salmon, I was taking them. Taking medication every day for months, and then it got to where I would only need to take it for maybe a month at a time and then a few weeks at a time.


Or I could just take it every few days or so when things got really bad. And so it's just got gradually better over time until last year where I didn't need it at all. And so I experimented with a lot of different supplements and. I found a few that really work for me, and if I take them as soon as I start experiencing symptoms, then I don't need drugs.


And so one of the things I take is called Aller, DMG by Da Vinci Labs. And so this has DMG, which helps with histamine response. It has cetin Broma, NAC or n-acetylcysteine, which. Really helps with liver detox and some other things as well. Some anti-inflammatory herbs. So I have found this works really well.


I also take a very natural supplement called Boron. They're allergy calm, so this is a homeopathic supplement. And so this doesn't get rid of them totally, but it does really help with the symptoms, especially if you start taking it right away. And then the last thing I take for gut health is called Mega IgG 2000.


So these have what are called immunoglobulins that are the first line of defense against pathogens in the gut. So they're really supporting the immune system in the gut. And so ideally, I would start taking this before allergy season even starts. But definitely as soon as I start noticing any kind of symptoms, I start taking this as well, and it seems to help.


So these three in combination are what I was able to take last year and not need Claritin or anything else at all. Now I used an online dispensary called Fullscript, and I created a plan in there that include these three supplements. So I will link to this in the show notes.


You can order these supplements from my Fullscript account and get 20% off. Now I do need to give a disclaimer that dietary supplements are not intended to replace medical advice or treatment. They should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and that you do want to consult a healthcare professional before use, especially if you have underlying health conditions or taking any medications.


So I hope that this helps you understand where seasonal allergies are coming from, why you. Are dealing with them and what you can take, that's actually going to help and see how the different symptoms you have, such as sleep issues, such as seasonal allergies are connected by the same imbalances in the body.


So when you find out what those are and fix them, then you can sleep consistently well and not deal with seasonal allergies anymore. All right everyone. Thanks so much for listening and I will talk to you next time.

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