Spring Love? Sneezes Big & Small

Listen to the breeze & birds with me in this outdoor recording sitting on a bay tree in the woods of Marin County, California exploring why so many of Us suffer from seasonal allergies, understanding our microbiome, how to heal more to lessen symptoms & what exactly is the metabolome?

I'll be going over several tips to strengthen within, shielding self with potent natural armor🌿🫶🏽

References:

https://open.substack.com/pub/consciouschoicesforwellness/p/spring-love --includes many links mentioned in show

https://www.herbcottage.com.au/blogs/grow-your-health/nettle-tea-benefits

https://www.wishgardenherbs.com/blogs/wishgarden/nettle-urtica-dioica-gracilis

Thank You All so very much for listening today!  I genuinely hope you learned something & I invite you to join me each week, so you never miss a conscious wellness beat!  This podcast holds a special place in my heart, dedicated to my evolution here, my passionate mission to spread more consciousness for the much needed wellness on Earth.  Come join me as a guest as well, let’s collaborate making change for future generations.. 

Thank you so much for joining me today!  I strongly Believe that we are all Connected and want to Share our gifts with One another.  Remember how amazing you are, Never Give Up, We can help and Support each other along this Crazy Journey...I'm going to keep Sharing what I can with all of You, just wish I could do more each day, Life is passing by too quickly!  This podcast is new and will be ever-evolving & improving as long as possible...Please share this with others who could benefit from this information(:

Questions?  Please don't be shy🌻

5-Star Reviews are Welcomed & Kindly Appreciated
-Helping to Support this Show for Future Gens~

Note: I am a One Woman Show, juggling many hats, simple, growing slowly as I can only flow with the time, trust in the organic divine process...ALGORITHM?

 
Here are links to my other Offerings:

https://consciouschoicesforall.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@belovehealingapothecary/videos

https://www.instagram.com/consciouswellbeing/

https://www.tiktok.com/@beluv73

https://poshmark.com/closet/belove73

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hello. Hello, hello. Welcome to your Conscious Choices for Wellness podcast. We are sitting in the woods and I will post a video, a couple clips of where we are. It's possible that we might have a visitor walking by, meaning in human form. Although it has not happened yet since I've been on this trail for about 15 minutes. So I'm on a small trail that's off the beaten path. But it's definitely a trail that's well used. And it's so beautiful. I am literally sitting on a huge bay tree. Bays like to grow sideways, like horizontal to the ground a lot instead of vertical. So I am sitting on a bay that is quite large. I will actually have to take a picture of this where I'm sitting as well. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I'm surrounded by bays and oaks and all kinds of plants, ferns, and poison oak. I had to make sure there wasn't too much poison oak around me. I still have great respect for that plant, even though I'm not so allergic to it. You just never know. And I have great respect after raising two of my kids, both my boys, were very allergic. And I had to treat them and heal them, help heal them, let's say, many, many times as they grew up. And they become became quite fearful of the poison oak plant, which is really sad to experience such pain from a plant and then be afraid to even go anywhere near it. My one son is a little bit more afraid. He's the one that doesn't really go in nature as much because he just yeah had too many experiences that I guess he didn't want to endure anymore. So, anyways, here we are together in the woods. I am recording outside today. I am speaking on loving spring, the season that we are in the middle of right now. Many of us love spring because of the warmer weather, the longer days, and all the blooms that it brings. Though many of us also, and I did my research. This is a kind of podcast that I had to do a little bit more research to get current and up to date on any new information that I may not have known. Um allergy symptoms are going up. Probably not a surprise, but um, the symptoms, the people, the number of people out there that are experiencing symptoms, the length and severity of symptoms, it's all on the rise, y'all. So yeah. Um, and I will get into why that is. So going back to the blog, which I will post a link to in the show notes, what sneezes big and small are telling us? Today I sit in my tiny home. No, right now I'm in the woods, about 10 minutes from my house. But yesterday when I was writing this blog, I was inside my home. And I have a few windows that I keep open, the ones that I feel are safe to leave open on the west end that are facing the trees, the two that welcome the late afternoon sun to shine through. I love where I live, even if it's not what I had really, really wanted. That place is coming. I know it is. I can envision it, and it is coming soon in the right timing. So choosing to allow what's given, right? That's what I did. I chose that, I allowed it in, I gave thanks for what I got. And yes, it did meet some crucial criteria, and I always make every home, however temporary it may be, my sanctuary to no end until it's time to move again. San Francisco Bay Area is an awesome place to live for the weather, the culture, the food, the conscious vibes, the beautiful nature that surrounds the ocean, live music, and super bonus is the closer to the actual Bay or Pacific Ocean you are, the less intense one may feel the effects from all the blooming trees come spring. So where I live in Northern California, the more inland you are, the more intense the allergies are. So let's keep breathing, but let's strengthen our bodies. So the root question goes back to what you can handle. What is your body feeling? Are you suffering the battle of allergens? And if so, it's probably more intense in the spring and maybe the fall for some too. Seasons that bring beauty with pollen. So it's just added. Our immune system is suffering from the get-go. That was me. I was born with gut issues. I was born with a weaker constitution, a weaker immune system, and I battled like hell when I was a kid growing up as to why I stand where I stand, and I've learned what I've learned because I didn't want to suffer in my adult years. So confirmation from Yes, the CDC, that our warm warming temperatures, fewer frostays, and rising CO2 levels are increasing pollen production. So the pollen production we're exposed to is not what it used to be. It's on the rise, y'all. And season length, okay, so the season length of spring is getting bigger because the temperatures are rising, we are getting shorter seasons, we are experiencing definitely. I don't know where you live, but I know this is happening, not just where I live, just different weather. We don't really know what to expect. It's not what it used to be. So the season length is merely being lengthened by a whole month in some areas. Yet another sad truth. And if your allergies worsen every year, don't ask what's blooming outside. Ask what may be out of balance or blooming inside of you. Going back to the core within our microbiome, aka gut health is and will always be essential for returning to a state of well-being. When the healthy microbes aren't who's in charge anymore and cannot flourish in a way that they can eat up potential allergens, then our bodies fall short, out of balance, and suffering of uncomfortable allergy symptoms setting in. Link is in the blog, in the show notes, on gut microbiota-metabolome crosstalk in allergic diseases, meticulously reviews the latest findings regarding the mutual influence between gut microbiota and the metabolome in host immune regulation, as well as the impact of this interaction on the development of allergic diseases, aiming to offer new strategies for the prevention and treatment of allergic diseases. And so, what is the metaballoom? I think I'm saying it right, y'all. So don't laugh at me, but I know many of you probably have not heard this term either. I had to look it up. I was like, okay, here's a new, you know, scientific term, metaballoom. It's your entire set of small molecule metabolites, such as amino acids, sugars, and lipids that are present within a cell, tissue, organ, or an organism at any specific time, changing rapidly in response to environmental, genetic, or physiological challenges or changes. Okay. So that makes sense, right? It's like your entire set of small molecule metabolites, such as your amino acids, sugars, and lipids, and those are all things that we have present throughout our bodies, right? So it's how much of that do we have going on that's like helping us, that's supporting us? Like what is the health of that? The gut microbiota and its metabolites play important roles in the pathogenesis of various diseases. The diversity of our gut microbiota is closely related to the development and function of the human immune system. So when one has severe or chronic allergy symptoms, that is also a sign of dysbiosis, aka imbalance, which is caused by alterations in the microbiota species, quantity, and distribution of microbial community. And this disrupts our immune tolerance mechanisms within our bodies, thereby inducing excessive immune responses to allergens and increasing the risk of chronic allergic disease. So this is a term now being used out there within the medical scientific community, chronic allergy allergic disease. I bet you know a few people that have that. Okay, someone that's like constantly battling their immune system, they are exposed to any kind of allergen and they have reactions to it, and they're always, you know, saying, Oh, it's allergies, I'm allergic to this or this, and they're just struggling, right? And it's it's quite sad. So, how do we put on our natural armor? Let's explore this. One thing we can do is feeding the good gut bacteria in our microbiome, right? Choose a diversity of plant foods every week. Mix it up. An example would be beans and lentils, oats, flax, chia, hemp seeds, onions, garlic, radishes, polyphenol, rich berries, roots, mushrooms, green banana. So just try to choose different foods. You know, get some that you haven't gotten before. There's probably like 50 to 100 in the produce section, right? So the more we we can do that and introduce new stuff that I'm talking whole foods, okay? Whole foods here, not processed, then we are going to be supporting our microbiome more and we're gonna make it flourish, we're going to make it grow. Just yeah, think think about it. And you know, do you want to feel better? Then you have to take action, right? We're in control of our own health, and it's not that hard. We can do it. Supporting another thing we can do is supporting the histamine balance, liver support. Okay, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more on this later, but we can do this by reducing or omitting alcohol during the peak season of when the allergies feel worse, avoiding ultra-processed foods. That would be something that has different ingredients in it that's in a package. Look at the ingredients. If there's three or four or more ingredients, or more than three or four ingredients, it's highly processed. Okay, most things that are packaged should only have three or four ingredients. Optimize your vitamin C. Try to find it in foods, that's in your fruits and vegetables, in seeds, um, talking about seeds in in vegetables and fruits, fruits especially, but also you can supplement, you know, there's some great vitamin C supplements out there, hydrating well throughout the day without sugar, adding some electrolytes that don't have sugar to your water if you'd like. Electrolytes are always going to help you absorb more water into your body, and that's going to help you detoxify and cleanse out the pollutants that are in there. Lifestyle choices. Okay, so checking our sleep. Many of us need to sleep eight to nine hours most nights. We should be sleeping that much. Managing our stress daily. Many ways we can do that. Movement daily, getting out and moving, going into nature. If you need to, if you're having trouble with your sinuses, doing a nasal saline rinse, getting a neti pot, and that's an easy way to do it. And you could do that once or twice a day. It'll help clean out your sinuses. If you don't already have one, getting a HEPA filtration system, an air purifier in your home. Many of us got this after COVID, or if we live in places where there's fires, but turn that on. Keep it going. Especially when you're sleeping, like when you're home at night and when you go to sleep, it's a good thing to have on. You'll wake up and you'll feel better. I actually keep mine on sometimes at night for white noise, and it's right by where I'm sleeping. And so, you know, it's helping the air to be clean while I'm breathing, while I sleep, and then also helping me to sleep deeper with that white noise that I need. Consuming probiotic rich foods such as unsweetened yogurt, that's plain yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut or kimchi, miso or natto, those are both from soy. They're fermented products that are great, very salty and very good for you. Kombucha in moderation. I say that because a lot of kombucha has a lot of sugar, so you don't want to be drinking like one or two a day. That could be too much sugar for most people. And then, of course, stinging nettle is like a superior herb to incorporate for everyone, really, anytime, but it is so good for allergies. It has been consistently proven over and over. Much research has been done. It's been used for centuries. Consider drinking nettle tea daily for optimum health benefits, giving your immune system a boost, improving skin quality, regulating blood sugar levels. It also, yes, helps with managing allergy symptoms and so much more. So if you're curious how this plant does so much, I've linked a 2018 scientific article that dives really deep into researching the chemical composition of what's inside these green leaves and probably the roots, too. I know the whole plant is used. Um, that's linked in the blog in the show notes. Our ancestors had many uses of the nettle plant, aka Vertica dioica, even used the stems and stalks to make fiber. Yes, this plant is similar to hemp in that way of making fiber for clothing and robe. Today, this green prickly haired beauty is a must have for any conscious soul wanting to explore all the natural love that herbs can give. Seasonal sneezing, congestion, and watery eyes. Me, when I get allergy symptoms, it's usually an Itchy throat and itchy eyes and some sneezing like too periodically. So those are signs, those are clear signs of your body having something it's trying to get rid of. It's having a reaction it can't handle, so it's sending out signals to create symptoms of, oh, I'm overloaded with this. I I can't, I can't quite, you know, I need some support here, like please help. So stinging nettle extract is well known for its ability to calm the histamine response and just may become your go-to natural remedy for allergy relief. The tiny hair-like trichomes that are on the nettles are packed with compounds that calm our histamine response and soothe symptoms quickly, making this a great option for calming sneezing, congestion, and itchy eyes without the side effects of synthetic medications. So something I didn't really go into in the blog, and I'm just going to go ahead and give a shout out about is the prickliness that nettle has on its leaves is very active when the plant is fresh and before even before harvesting. And so if you find it in the wild, because once you know what it looks like and you ever get into wildcrafting and you're somewhere and and you discover how you know miraculous this plant is and you want to take some home with you so you don't have to buy it from whomever, which I have done, and it's a great thing to do, but just take a little bit, just take what you need, or you can grow your own. But it will have these little prickly hair-like things that are under the leaves that are already a little prickly. When I say prickly, it's like a soft prickly, it's not like a like an oak, scrub oak kind of prickly leaf. It's it's more of a dainty, delicate, soft-like prickle. But then there's these other hairs that grow underneath each um bunch of leaves, and those are super stingy. That's why they call it stinging nettle, and they will like zap you, and you'll feel the sting on your fingers or wherever you touch the plant for up to 20 minutes. Some people even feel it longer as kind of a burning, you know, like stinging sensation. So it's uh yeah, it's kind of cool. It's like, okay, what is this all about? Like the plants like not wanting to be touched, it's not wanting certain entities to get near it. Um, it's something that's protecting it, but I believe that plants that have this kind of um characteristic are mysterious. Um, definitely I'm curious about it to know more. I'm sure there's probably a whole whole book written on this plant. But yeah, just be careful because once it becomes dried, it loses that. The hairs seem to kind of dye and it's not going to sting you as much. It's going to feel a little bit prickly on the leaves still, but um, and it's in its fresh form, it is it is very potent and it will zap you and you'll be like, ah. So it's probably just, I think maybe because it's so wonderful and miraculous, it's kind of a warning, like, doesn't want everybody to like take it because everybody should be using it, right? So only the wise and the knowing can harvest it carefully and respectfully, and that will keep this plant going for generations. So, yeah, so just drinking the nettle tea may have mild diuretic properties which can help to flush out toxins from the body, removing harmful bacteria from the urinary tract. So there's just a couple other little tidbits of what the plant can do for you. The nettles contain powerful compounds like flavonoids that help regulate your immune system by soothing inflammation, helping our bodies not to overreact to the harmless allergens. This powerhouse plant also embodies bioactive polysaccharides, which are natural carbohydrates that work to calm overactive histamine production, effectively reducing the severity and frequency of allergy symptoms. So, why not try swapping out your over-the-counter options for a cup of soothing nettle tea or a tincture for on-the-go support? Literally, the tea will cost you about$6 and last up to 10 days if drunken twice daily. It's gentle on your body, easier on your wallet, and offers a natural plant-based way to breathe freely, feel better, adding several key nutrients to your body that will not just aid your allergy symptoms. Most herbs have many valuable potential uses. Seeking allergy relief is essential with sipping on a nettle brew or dropping or popping a concentrated extract via tincture or capsule during April and May. My actual favorite go-to if I'm having an allergy attack has always been since I discovered it probably 20 years ago or more, is the infamous homeopathic combination from Bioallers. They make, I think, four different ones for different allergies. There's like a tree pollen one, there's one for grasses, there's one for mold, there's a pet allergy one. They all work great. I've tried different ones. I believe I like just the um like the grasses one. It's just got like um, yeah, I don't think I use the tree one. I think I just use the other one. It's just kind of for a bunch of different things. And it's got about 15 homeopathic remedies that are combined. It's a liquid, it tastes literally like water with a drop of alcohol, and it works wonders. You just put like 10 to 15 drops under your tongue when you start to feel allergy symptoms come on, and it definitely helps. Like I've had bad allergy attacks, like if I've been in the Sacramento Valley area during the spring, when I used to go to the whole Earth Festival every May on Mother's Day, oh, that was like the worst. Like Davis is one of the worst areas, and it's one of the hottest areas of Northern California in the Central Valley, and um my son would have really bad allergies there too. And I would always have to have that with me. And the eye drops, which I'm gonna talk about in a second. It's very affordable, it will last you all season or even a few years if just used occasionally. Now, unfortunately, the homeopathic eye drops have been banned, all of them. There was a few different companies that were making them, and they got banned in 2024 by the FDA for, as I'd like to say, no fucking good reason, except that they say they weren't approved, or that there was, you know, an ingredient in it that basically they didn't really know what it was, and they didn't know how it would work so miraculously, and how they could claim on the box that it was helping people, you know, with this and that. And yes, it was helping. Like these eyedrops were amazing. And at the time when the FDA did this, which is a little over two, almost two, two and a half years ago, I was working in the industry in a wellness department at a very well-known natural food store in the Bay Area. And customer after customer every day would come through being like, Where are my eye drops? Where are my eye drops? Like people need them because they know that they were helping them. And the FDA, yeah, wrote letters to these companies that had been selling them for decades saying, You've you've got to pull these. We we no longer, you know, are going to approve you to be selling and claiming what you're claiming on the package, which was very true and valid. And yeah, just don't get me started on that. Um basically, it's all about money, and they were feeling the competition and people were getting helped, and they didn't want that. So, yeah, the FDA is not they're evil. They're not really out there to help us, they're out there to support big pharma. That's what they're out there for. So, yeah, hundreds, if not thousands, of customers now that were helped from these very effective eye drops, are now without access to this medicine. So, what's an alternative? Because I know for myself, I get eye stuff. Like my eyes will get really watery and like itchy when I'm having an attack. So I wanted to put an alternative in here for y'all. Eye bright herb, which is also known as your phrasia officionalis, that was one of the key ingredients in all these eye drops. So you can get eye bright as a tincture. I know Herb Farm has it, maybe Mountain Rose has it, is excellent for helping irritated eyes and can be found in homeopathic form as well, or in a tincture. And then if you have it in a tincture form, you can dilute it in warm, pure water to use as your own eye drops or an eye wash. So if you're diluting it, you would want to put, like, say if you had like a little eye cup or you just had like, you know, a little dropper and you're gonna do like 10 eye drops, you would just put like two drops of the tincture into like a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon. You know, you you don't need a lot because the tincture is very concentrated, two or three drops, but you want to dilute it in the warm water. I say not cold, is because the warm water will dissipate the uh alcohol of the tincture. So the alcohol is there's gonna be alcohol and water in the tincture, but you don't want to really be putting alcohol right in your eye. Plus, it's already diluted anyway, so if there's a tiny bit, it's probably fine. But if you want to use warm water, that will ensure that you're getting rid of any alcohol that's left. And some pro tips are spring is a perfect time for loving our livers more by cleansing out excess toxins. So remembering that this vital organ can work more efficiently when we detox out the pollutants that are irritating us. We can love our livers by consuming dandelion greens and roots, adding these to food or making a tea. This will help support the liver in detoxification and nourishment. Uh supplementing, another pro tip is supplementing with activated quercetin, a potent bioflavonoid found in certain foods. It acts as an amazing anti-inflammatory agent, one of the most studied plant compounds for histamine balance, modulating immune function by enhancing the activity of natural killer cells, macrophages, and T lymphocytes. Quercetin is one of the most studied plant compounds for histamine balance. It works with the cells that release histamine, helping your body stay calm instead of flaring up. And a therapeutic source is key. And it can be tough to find. Most quercetin is really just passing right through the body. And you need to make sure that it's absorbed properly because it is quite expensive. It went, it like doubled in price during COVID because it was helping people with COVID. It was in high demand, and the price nearly doubled, if not tripled. So just really make sure you find a good source. I looked just a little bit and I found this Quarce Elite by Mara Labs that looked pretty good. It pairs quercetin with a broccoli seed complex. So your body actually takes in and uses more of it. Broccoli seeds are high in sulfuripane, which is a potent plant compound that our guts welcome in and makes other nutrients more bioavailable for optimal absorption. That is a supplement that is very worthwhile if you have the money. Another pro tip is alkalizing. Hi. This bay branch with all these leaves just came right in my face. I'm like, whoa, it's a little breezy today. Um, yes, so alkalizing our bodies is really key always for optimum health, giving us a gentle detox by adding in a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice to a glass of pure water each morning upon rising. Drink before anything else, and feel the difference after a few days. It will give less mucus, you'll notice, better elimination, more energy, and yes, it could help with fewer allergy symptoms because you're gently detoxifying your liver and your gut and making it easier. Drinking spring water or adding electrolytes to filtered water for added benefits. Breathing exercises will assist if you have sinusitis issues. Try nasal passage cleansing with a neti pot first, then alternate nostril breathing for a minute, two to three times daily. I do need to put a link to, but you can also just Google alternate nostril breathing. It's a very easy exercise. You just use your fingers in a certain way to obstruct one side, inhale, exhale, and then switch to the other side, inhale, exhale, and you just keep alternating. So you're just breathing in and out through one nostril and then the other in a pattern for about a minute. This will really help in many, many aspects of health. There's also breathe right nasal strips that have been found to help some breathe better, especially while sleeping. Investing in a local raw and filtered honey. Okay, I think it's good to do this before allergy season comes. So you kind of like build up your system and get it get it ready. Um, but raw and filtered honey is has many health benefits, um, ranging from the enzymatic action, you know, having the extra enzymes to help support the gut, and also has um micronutrients to help support the body, as well as giving your body a boost to tolerate the plants in your area, right? If it's local, the bees are getting the pollen from the plants that you're possibly allergic to, and they're making it into this wonderful honey product. So this method is effective if the body is clean, okay, not already overburdened by pollutants. You're going to notice it more if you're if you've done like a detox first or if you're already eating a whole foods diet. So it's working homeopathically, like cures like, right? The bees are eating the pollen, they're digesting it, they're pre-digesting it for you, and then making it making it into a honey product that is raw and unfiltered, so it has like net it has the medicine still alive in it, and then you're ingesting it just a little bit every day, just a little bit every day, like no more than a teaspoon, like a half a teaspoon twice a day or something like that, like added to you know your yogurt or your tea or something, your nettle tea. So that is what I have for you on allergies. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. Um actually last year I wanted to, and I don't think I did. So I think this is my first podcast on allergies, and it's a very, very wide topic. Um, I didn't want to be going on for a very long time, but I'm sure I did. Thank you so much for listening. I love and appreciate all of my listeners. I um put out a yoga video like I said I would last time, and it um got released almost a week ago, though. I do have to say I didn't set up my camera right. So it ended up when I edited it, I had to zoom in, and so then I had to do like a picture-in-picture show so you could actually see my body and what I was doing. And I sorry, I won't do that again. And it had been a long time since I'd recorded a video in that way, and so my next yoga video next week, I will make sure the camera is the right way. I will also make sure that I'm not doing it in the hottest part of the day on my deck, and that was kind of a practice round, y'all. So, so please forgive me if you did watch that. It's all good, it was very intuitive, and you have to listen to the playlist that I made for you with the video. Okay, the playlist is like the most important part, or you can listen to the playlist separately. But I put three different playlists linked in the yoga video from last week for Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. So, whatever you got, you can listen to my playlist. It's about 35 minutes of awesome music. And I was listening to that playlist as I was doing the video. So it was intuitive, and as I did the poses, it was listening to that music. So next week we'll have a new playlist, we'll have a new video, it'll be completely different. And I thank you for your support. If you can please share this with someone that you think would get any, you know, knowledge that they'd appreciate from that would be helpful for them. If you suffer from allergies, I hope this helped you. Or if you know somebody that does, please share this with your friends, your family, whoever you think it may help. That's why I'm doing this to help whoever I can. All right, from the bottom of my heart.