EP 20 | Your Sleep Isn’t Broken, Your Body Is Asking for Help

Struggling with insomnia, 3 AM wake-ups, or that wired-but-exhausted feeling? In this episode we break down the real causes of poor sleep — gut issues, cortisol, histamine, and nervous system stress, and how to finally support your body.

Forget the generic advice — the blackout curtains, the no-screens rule, the chamomile tea.

If you’ve tried all of that and you’re still not sleeping…
there are deeper mechanisms at play, and we’re unpacking them.

In this episode, we explore:

• How stress, trauma, and hypervigilance confuse your circadian rhythm
• Why your gut might be keeping you awake (yep — inflammation kills melatonin production)
• What “tired but wired” actually means
• The cortisol–melatonin dance your body performs every night
• Why traditional sleep advice fails people with chronic illness
• The surprising connection between histamine overload and insomnia
• How low DAO, poor digestion, and nutrient deficiencies show up as night-time anxiety

What’s Coming in Part 2

Next week, we go deeper with:

 ✨ myth-busting the most common sleep advice
 ✨ chronic-illness-specific sleep strategies
 ✨ nervous system tools
 ✨ how to rebuild trust with your body
 ✨ and practical ways to actually implement these changes

Transcript

Katie: So, sleep Science 101. Today we're gonna really go into why your sleep might be broken through the lens of gut health, trauma, hormones, and especially the nervous system. Because, you know, this sets the foundation for all the practical tips that come later.

Amanda: I'm excited about this episode. I shared a, a story on my Instagram the other day because I've been wearing a whoop band for the last month and it gives me a lot of insights into my sleep and recovery and all of that. And I am like a great sleeper. I get a hundred percent sleep scores regularly and.

I don't mean to brag, but I'm like a champion sleeper. And I shared a story on my Instagram the other day and the amount of people that commented how do you get such good sleep? Like, tell me your ways. Clearly it's something that's really needed and that a lot of people struggle with.

So [00:01:00] I think this is perfect timing for this episode.

Katie: I think it's just something that's progressively getting worse because of the amount of stimulus we have nowadays. It's, you know, we are not. Having a proper routine going to bed. It's like we are watching the TV or we are doom scrolling, looking at screens, and we're not giving ourselves that time to relax and get into a good sleep hygiene schedule.

Really where we're setting ourselves up for a good, a good sleep. Yeah.

Amanda: And I think that there's a lot of. Well, there's a lot of sleep advice out there, but I think a lot of it is very generic. So things that you've heard a million times, like yeah, no screens before bed and have a wind down routine and get blackout curtains, you know, things like that. But to a person that really struggles with their sleep, who's tried all of those things [00:02:00] can be incredibly frustrating and I think that it's important to understand that there's a lot of underlying mechanisms.

That are not really discussed in the mainstream sleep advice out there

Katie: No, especially if you're on steroids suffering from sleep insomnia, it's, yeah, that's not exactly covered.

Amanda: Ya. So that's the goal today is to kind of dig a little deeper and specifically through the lens of people who are maybe dealing with chronic illness or gut dysbiosis or hormone imbalance and why sleep is something that seems to allude them like some of the underlying mechanisms that could be at play.

 Do you feel since having your whoop that because, okay, I asked this question because when I got my aura ring and I still wear my aura ring and I got it like. Four or five years ago, [00:03:00] I, actually got like really obsessed with, with my sleep score and it was, it was actually disrupting my sleep as in I would wake up at like half four in the morning, just 

Amanda: to check 

Katie: my sleep score.

Amanda: Oh my God.

Katie: and I was like, I need to, I need to go cold Turkey on this and

Amanda: Kinda like,

Katie: out battery and not, not recharge it.

Amanda: it's kind of like when you, so I don't have any, stimulus in my room at night. Like I don't have a, an alarm clock by my bed. I don't keep my phone by my bed, so I can't check the time. But that reminds me of times that I have had that where, you know, you wake up at four o'clock in the morning and you can't get back to sleep and then you're looking at the clock 'cause you're like, I know I only have two hours left to sleep and like, you're almost counting down.

And then that just creates more stress. I've definitely been there. But no, I find I can, I can definitely see how it can become [00:04:00] an obsession tracking your biomarkers and your sleep and your recovery and your steps and all of that. I'm a person that likes data. I like having information so that I can adjust my habits.

So I would say that. The amount of the amount of data that I've received in the last month has allowed me to really shift my habits and optimize for my sleep, but I can absolutely see how it can teeter on that side of obsession and compulsion. And I think like I have a one year membership to whoop.

I think after that I will likely just not continue and with the goal of living my life just as a human and trying to keep those habits in in place, but not obsessing over the data.

Katie: Because at that point [00:05:00] you are. You are gonna know what works well 'cause you'll collected so much data, you are gonna be able to identify what worked well and lean into that and cues when things aren't so good and what you need to do about it to rectify that. So yeah, I I I get that. I get that.

I'm like five years deep into a, a subscription.

Amanda: How do you find it now that you're, that you've had more time with it? Is it something that you kind of look at and have it, you know, guide you, but not in an obsessive kind of way?

Katie: Yeah, I, to be honest, like being totally truthful here training is so intense. My aura ring is like every day. Need to prioritize recovery. Like you need to rest. Your stress levels are so high, blah, blah. Obviously not every chapter of my year is this intense. But I, so I just, [00:06:00] eventually I'll just stop looking at it because I'm like, oh, I, I know what it's gonna say.

It's gonna tell me to calm down and I can't, I, I don't wanna do that. But I know my body now, and I know when. It needs certain things. When I need to focus on different things that will essentially help me to not flare up. But even sometimes checking my aura, it, that is just, it still, yeah, it doesn't like stress me out, but when I've had a stressful day My stress levels will be quite high, so I know that, that evening and the following day, I need to take it easy, just so, yeah. I, I feel like it's, it's kind of like coming from the same lens as what you said, but From a different angle.

Amanda: Yeah, and it's interesting because, so right now I am in a flare up and. Have been for the last two weeks or so. And so I'm making my primary focus right now, my recovery. And so I have kind of the opposite [00:07:00] messages on my whoop telling me you know, your recovery is really strong and you had really great sleep last night.

You can, you know, today's a day to push your strain. And it's telling me, it's giving me these strain targets and telling me that I should be reaching for optimal strain. And I'm like, no, no, no.

Katie: Absolutely. Yeah. That's really interesting actually. So. From your experience and your knowledge, you actually know now to override that almost, and not listen to it for, for

Amanda: Yeah.

Katie: self and your highest goods, rather than someone that doesn't necessarily know their body that much, or they're at the beginning of their journey and they're like, oh my God, great.

I can go for a run, but. You know, that's just gonna cause extra inflammation in the body and it's probably not the best protocol to take. So, yeah, that's really interesting.

Amanda: Because I ultimately know that this device is well, it's, it's kind of meant to be giving me information to [00:08:00] optimize my health, and it has a strong focus on cardiovascular health. You know, trying to improve your resting heart rate, your VO two max for longevity purposes. Totally get that, but.

Understanding that my goals during a flare up are low stress, low inflammation, rest and recovery. That's what's gonna get me to where I'm going faster than, you know, my priority right now is not improving my VO O2 max or, you know, cardiovascular health. So yeah, it's important to know that it. Just like you said, you're not always in this stage where you are pushing yourself.

You just happen to be training for a competition right now, so your strain levels are higher. You're, you're really wanting to push past, you know, your, your last prs and, and that's just where you are.

Katie: It's kind of like the same message, but in a different way. And [00:09:00] we are just like, we are gonna take you with a pinch of salt and move forward.

Amanda: And understanding that everybody's goals are different. And so I think that these devices can be great, especially for someone who doesn't understand their body and, and how to adapt to the different stages that it's in. So. Like stress is a huge one, and stress comes in so many forms. Stress isn't just when you feel stressful in your mind.

Like you just mentioned, you know, running puts your body into a state of high stress and so understanding that. We can't always just be pushing ourselves. It has to be that balance between stress and recovery. I think it can be a great tool for people to build that awareness. 'Cause I think so many people are just burning the candle at both [00:10:00] ends and not making time for sleep and for proper recovery.

And. And then it's just, you know, the symptoms just start to pile up and pile up and pile up.

Katie: And I say to everyone, the first step to any healing journey all about laying the foundations It's starting to build up this Bible of your body and how it works. So as you said, this kind of device will really help kickstart your journey. Get your foot in the door.

When it comes to feeling maybe, perhaps slightly overwhelmed or not knowing where to begin, just starting to build up this book of how your body works and how it functions. It is a great place to start because, you know, let's be honest, sleep is literally the first thing to go when your gut's inflamed and your nervous system is shot to pieces.

So if you are. Especially if you're running on stress hormones. I dunno about you, but I used to lie in bed, [00:11:00] absolutely exhausted, but also wired and tired all day, and then wide awake at like 11:00 PM and this probably sounds really familiar to a lot of people. So one of the things that I wanted to cover in today's episode was all about how your circadian rhythm isn't necessarily broken.

It's just. Perhaps slightly confused.

Amanda: And I think that that is, like you said, all too familiar for a lot of people because when we have some underlying issues with our health. And it's affecting our sleep and it's affecting our cognition and our performance during the day. And our, you know, causing fatigue causes us to lean into things like caffeine, to try and keep ourselves awake and able to cope.

And I think so many people out there are. Thinking that they need to [00:12:00] optimize when really they are, they need to be learning the foundations. And sleep is one of the biggest foundations of health. So you can't really get to the next level of pushing yourself, whether that be through athletic performance or weight loss or whatever it is that a person wants to change about themselves.

We can't get there unless we're dealing with the foundations and sleep is number one.

Katie: Exactly. And you know, your internal clock relies on cues from things like light and food and movement and safety. And when we are chronically stressed and we've got a lot of inflammation in the body, it completely confuses this rhythm, right? So it's more about what rituals can we put into place that don't come habitually so that we can start to change this behavior pattern that we're in at the moment. Because something has to change Well, that's the definition of insanity, [00:13:00] right?

Amanda: Yeah, just keep pushing the boulder up the hill every single day.

Katie: Yeah, doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

 Sleep is. Especially interlinked with chronic stress and high cortisol levels because it's not like a machine. It's not like we are chronic, we are chronically stressed. We sleep bad, we sleep bad, which stresses us out, and then we feel like it's just a machine that just switches off at night because that's what's expected of us, and our body goes to sleep. So we're basically stuck in this, in this loop, right, where we're stressing ourselves out through chronic illness and chronic condition, but then we become chronically stressed and. The body just thinks that there's a threat all the time. It doesn't know that you are chronically ill. It's just stuck in this flight or fight situation, and we don't know how to get ourselves into a parasympathetic state, which will enable us to [00:14:00] have that restorative sleep that we are searching for. So I think we need to cover perhaps. How to deal with high cortisol levels because cortisol is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just our perception of it. Cortisol is, is there to help us prepare for a threat. And back in the day that would've been, you know. An animal or something chasing us, it's actually our body just preparing for challenge.

Katie: So I think from a certain perspective it comes down to how we perceive it on a psychological front and how we perceive stress, whether that be in work or relationships or sleep or what our symptoms are doing at the moment. And really search for how we can get that melatonin release, which is gonna help us. Prepare for a good night's sleep, for example, or deal with stress in a different way. And over time, this behavior pattern become habitual [00:15:00] and you'll know what you need to do to allow yourself to relax your CNS and get into that. Parasympathetic state where you won't just sleep better, but you can deal with general life stress a lot better.

And then we are back in that circle, loop where cortisol will be lower and stress will be better. We'll deal with situations better. So it's all interlinked. But learning how to break this behavior pattern to start with and having that awareness, which is the first step to any behavior change, I feel is something that. If you have chronically poor sleep it's definitely something that needs to be addressed To start with, what do you think

Amanda: Yeah, and understanding the relationship between your. Circadian rhythm and your hormones is I think, an imperative. Just general knowledge for everybody. So knowing that [00:16:00] our bodies and our energy level is not something that is static and and just constant. We go through these kind of cycles and that's directly related to.

Cortisol, as you said. And so our cortisol typically I think, begins to rise around two or three in the morning where it starts to gradually come up to prepare to wake you for your day. And at the same time, we have the inverse relationship of our melatonin starting to decrease. So allowing our body to, to become more awake.

And so if you kind of picture it as these waves that happen in our day, we have that cortisol increase in the early morning that kind of peaks mid-morning and then starts to kind of come back down a little bit. We can understand our, energy levels better [00:17:00] when we look at it that way. So that midday slump that people can naturally experience where you start to feel tired after lunch is, is typically related to those hormones in our body starting to decrease and.

So we're, when we start to, I think, set our schedules up and our lives up in a way that corresponds with those natural rises and falls that can be very helpful when you understand what's going on. But as you just spoke about that, elevated cortisol levels elevated stress hormones in our body that comes.

Typically with chronic illness. So this is related to our gut health, this is related to our histamine status. Things can start to get a little bit out of whack. And then, as you said. We have so much stimulus in our world on a daily [00:18:00] basis now we are being constantly stimulated by screens and social media and phone calls and, you know, there's just always so much going on that it can just put us in this state of constant like hypervigilance, like you said, where maybe hundreds of years ago that.

Hypervigilance was when there was a predator around, and now that's just where we exist on a daily basis.

Katie: Absolutely. Yeah, And I feel like I don't know about you, but when. Pretty much everyone I speak to has this same issue especially when it comes to hypervigilance and boundary setting. and just keeping. Accountable to these things is really tough for a lot of people. You know, the obsession is real. It's there and it's hard to take yourself out of that [00:19:00] situation. When we are in a, a society that thrives off that, you know sharing content with each other, that makes us laugh. We get that dopamine here, it's. You know, we feel that connection with people and as a human race, that's what we're searching for. So when it comes down to things like the gut brain axis which, pretty much makes or breaks sleep. And talking about how the gut produces like literally 400 times more melatonin than, than the brain. When we have gut dysbiosis or inflammation or any kind of gut dysregulation, it really disrupts serotonin and the melatonin conversion. So when we have gut inflammation. The brain literally can't rest. And we know that during, know this sounds really weird, but during the night our body actually washes our brain which is a crazy concept, but. We are not getting that

[00:20:00] and this is where brain fog come into place. And it just disrupts our sleep even more because we're in that heightened fight or flight. chronically stressed state.

Amanda: Right, and when we're talking about. The nervous system states and that switching from sympathetic to parasympathetic state, like the parasympathetic state, is often referred to as rest and digest. It's what allows us to calm down and get rest. So, when. When that ability, your body's ability is impaired and you're not really able to switch fluidly from sympathetic to parasympathetic state.

Obviously that rest and digest is, is going to be impaired and further, you know, causing issues when it comes to gut because it's impairing your body's [00:21:00] ability to digest and assimilate the food that you've eaten. And that just is like a big loop, right? We're not resting, we're not digesting properly, we're not getting the nutrients we need from our food.

And when we become. Potentially deficient in, in nutrients, especially minerals that affects your hormone levels and your body's ability to create these hormones and these neurotransmitters. And it's just a big circle that can be really hard to break out of, and especially if you don't understand what's happening.

Katie: And then chucking in supplements and wondering why they're not working.

Amanda: Hmm.

Katie: yes, of course there is a level of uncertainty when it comes to whether. The supplements that you're taking are actually potent and high quality as to whether or not they're working whether they've got a ton of bulking agents in them . But there's also a level of your body not actually being able to. Utilize the supplements [00:22:00] because it is in such an inflammatory state. Going back to what you just said. So yeah, it's definitely a cycle and the awareness around that is not spoken about from this blanket. State of why you are not sleeping properly And I know you that you, before we started recording, you were, you know, telling me a bit of a story. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit and how histamine really affected you at the beginning of your journey?

Amanda: Yeah, I, I can think about. I can think about a few different instances where this started to become noticeable for me and I didn't understand it years ago. But going back to after my military service overseas coming back to Canada and just being in this chronic stress state

I would say I'd never really experienced any sort of symptoms of anxiety before that. And I [00:23:00] started to have this thing that would happen where I would feel fine during the day. And I had, you know, my daughter was young, she was just a baby, and I was doing the mom things, going through the motions during the day, and then when I'd climb into bed at night.

I would start to get this feeling of kind of like a restless leg fidgety itchy almost from like the inside out. And I would feel like I literally wanted to crawl out of my skin. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. It's a horrible, uncomfortable feeling. It's like. You want to be anywhere but where you are.

And it's so bizarre that it would hit me at night when I would climb into bed. 'cause I wouldn't experience any of that during the day. And. dealing with a, a young child [00:24:00] days were long and busy and I would be exhausted and I'd climb into bed and all I wanna do is sleep. And then this feeling would just kind of start from my legs and go up my body.

And, and then the more that I'd lay there and fixate on the feeling, it would just get worse and I didn't understand it. And. It went on for several months and I really didn't get any sort of explanation from my doctor or anything like that as to what was happening, and now I understand what was happening because.

At the time, I had just gone through a traumatic experience, a ton of chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation. This was before my gut symptoms actually kind of came out. So in my mind when I look back at that, these were like the initial brewings of [00:25:00] something's not right. And I'll be honest, the, the only thing that I kind of thought of at the time was like, well, maybe I should go to my doctor and get like a sleeping pill, you know, because we, we, it was just like.

I just need to sleep, and I just wonder how many people have experienced the same thing and then end up in that place where we're not thinking about like, where is this coming from? 'cause I didn't have the knowledge at the time to understand all these different processes in my body that had been impacted by my military service.

Katie: Once you figured out what it was did you start to implement a certain protocol? What did that look like?

Did you find relief immediately or, was it quite a long process, how did that kind of transpire for you?

Amanda: So I didn't actually really figure out what it was till years later. My mom who was working in mental health and addictions at the time, I told her about it and she [00:26:00] said, those are physical manifestations of stress and anxiety. So maybe you're not having panic attacks, but this is like, a physical symptom of anxiety.

So that's how she explained it to me. And interestingly enough, My relationship at the time with my husband was in shambles. It was horrible. We ended up divorcing and I ended up moving back home to my family. And as soon as I did that, as soon as I got out of that environment and moved it stopped completely and then the colitis symptoms started very shortly after that.

Katie: Interesting. Do you think that trauma that you experienced then from the toxic relationship was. Underneath the surface, building up this inflammation along with the histamine response that you're having, which resulted in, in IBD. [00:27:00] Do you feel like that was your of like flicking the, the light switch on moment?

Amanda: It was. I, when I look back at it now, I realize it was all just a compounding effect. It was not only the, the trauma that I experienced in my tour overseas, but it was the years of chronic stress and overexerting and pushing my body through my military training, because that went on for years.

You know, we've spoken about this before. The, doing runs, expected to do runs until you puke kind of training and then going out and drinking in the evening and not sleeping, just, you know, years of that building up. Then you layer on the traumatic events of my tour and that was what put a strain on my relationship ultimately because we were a military couple and we both went overseas, so we both came back.

Kind of broken and then we're [00:28:00] existing in this house together, not dealing with our own stuff, and then also not dealing with our stuff as a couple. So it was just layer upon layer upon layer for years. And then all of those physical manifestations of, of the. Stress and trauma started to come out in my body and they happened in stages.

This being the first, the first one, the experiencing anxiety for the first time and sleep disruption. And, and then the physical symptoms that I started to notice with my IBD, and, and that took two years to actually diagnose. So multiple doctor visits and tests and waiting and all the while my symptoms are getting worse and worse and worse.

And through that whole process, which was probably over a three year span. I was not supporting my body properly because I didn't know how, [00:29:00] and I didn't know why any of this was happening. So I had nobody at the time telling me what these symptoms were and that like, they're obviously affecting my sleep, right?

But. Like I said, besides going to my doctor and asking for an anti-anxiety medication or a sleep aid, that, that was all I knew that, you know, I just didn't have any underlying understanding of what was happening in my body and how I could support my body.

Katie: Because histamine isn't just an allergy thing, right? It's your body's way of saying, you know, I'm in inflamed, I'm wired. I need support, not suppression. And unless you're aware of these things like you are now, but you weren't, then you're not actually going to know. What protocol to take to help help your body.

So this is more of just an awareness thing to let you know that this could possibly be a factor as to why you are not sleeping great, and why you've [00:30:00] got that wired but tired vibe. Or like you said, maybe your skin feels itchy, or your heart's racing, or your thoughts are. Like on a treadmill, and you're like, why am I alert when I should be knocked out?

You know? And then, then you get annoyed that you're not asleep when you want to sleep. And it's, just knowing that this could be a reason why might be feeling like that.

Amanda: Yeah, and I think about that with I was just speaking to a girlfriend the other day and she mentioned to me that she really has a hard time sleeping and. So as a result, she knows that she, if she tries to go to bed early, she's just gonna lay there, like you said, tired, but wired. And so she just doesn't go to sleep until one o'clock in the morning because she's like, there's no point.

I'm just gonna lay there. And then, and then what that does to your body, because if you're getting. Less than ideal amounts of sleep every night for a prolonged period of time. You're [00:31:00] just incurring that sleep debt and it's just compounding on top of each other, which further disregulates your circadian rhythm, right?

Because our body. During, you know, those hour, early hours of sleep is when we're going through all of that restorative processes or should be going through those restorative processes in our body, and we're just not getting that. Which just leaves your body more confused and out of rhythm and it, it just becomes harder and harder to regain that.

Katie: Oh yeah. Yeah. And we are back to this cycle. And another layer is DAO, which you know, is your body's kind of like cleanup crew for histamine, but if your DAO is low due to gut issues or like you said, nutrient deficiencies or even genetics and histamine is just. Piling up. And that can be a massive contributor

Amanda: Yeah. And the, the symptoms that come along with histamine overload we, we [00:32:00] spoke about this a little bit in our episode with Jess

Katie: didn't

Amanda: we were speaking about,

Katie: Yeah.

Amanda: Mast cell activation and histamine related issues. The symptoms that can come along when your body's. Histamine bucket is just overflowing and you're not able to clean all of that excess up.

The list is just endless. Everything from like elevated resting heart rate or heart palpitations, racing, heart to dizziness and vertigo to things like. Itching and hives, or just noticing that your seasonal allergies are just way intense and you're reactive to everything. Reactive to food, like even migraines and headaches, like the list goes on and on and on.

It's, it's huge, and I think most people just don't have an understanding of what's happening in their body.

Another, another quick note on the, the histamine [00:33:00] topic is something I experienced years ago where I would actually have an allergy attack every night at like 3:00 AM without fail every single night, and I couldn't figure it out. And I thought, I kept thinking that it was something to do with my environment, like I was thinking.

I sleep with the window open, and maybe it's like the pollen release at night from the trees and the pollen's coming in the window and it's making me sneeze. And it wasn't until I actually started to understand our body's relationship between histamine and cortisol, so it was every time that my cortisol started to rise naturally around 3:00 AM it would trigger that histamine.

Reaction

Katie: Yeah.

Amanda: I would wake up and sneeze and sneeze and sneeze and then be just, you know, snotty and need to go to the bathroom and, and blow my nose and I couldn't breathe. And I was like, what am I allergic to? [00:34:00] What? Like, I don't understand what's happening.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even like having the vertigo aspect to it, I used to have vertigo when I was younger. That is traumatic, like. Wow, a vertigo attack is, it's hectic. It's absolutely disgusting. So,

Amanda: Was this pre IBD diagnosis?

Katie: Yeah, it was, yeah, I remember I was, I was at a concert watching Leona Lewis in the O2 and we had like the worst seats right at the top of the back the middle, and I couldn't. I didn't even know I had vertigo at this point, and I tried to get to my seat and I literally thought I was dying. Like whole room just started spinning. I, I, it felt like, you know, when you're on a rollercoaster and you are on the drop, and I was feeling like that as if I was falling

Amanda: Like the floor was. Yeah.

Katie: I was holding onto the plastic [00:35:00] seats with dear life thinking I am like, is there an earthquake?

Amanda: Oh my God.

Katie: it was. It was horrendous. And after that I was like, I am clearly not good with heights.

But yeah, vertigo is really traumatic. So if you are having that, you know, on the regular, wow, you know that's gonna shoot your body down dramatically.

Amanda: I think that's really interesting. It sounds like in hindsight when we look at both of our journeys that we both were receiving those kind of. Messages from our body trying to tell us that something was wrong Which seemed to be kind of like the, the whisper before the scream of the IBD symptoms.

Katie: I mean I think I was maybe like 14 this point. I was quite young, it could have been the start.

Amanda: And I think that, well, typically the way that our medical system deals with the symptoms, [00:36:00] specifically vertigo, is they, they'll look at inner ear issues, you know, things like that. But I don't think that besides the functional medicine side of things, conventional medicine doesn't really seem to know what to do with vertigo.

If it. If it isn't falling into those, the typical categories of vertigo. And my mom actually struggled with this for several years going for all of the tests and nothing seemed to match up with why she was having these horrible vertigo symptoms. 

Katie: My mom used to get it all the time as well. That's crazy. Turned out she had too much electricity in her brain, but she used to get it every week and be sick and just have to be in bed. I used to feel so sorry for her, but it's yeah, it's traumatic. Anyway, I genuinely thought I was dying or something.

Amanda: That it's like what is happening? Like this is not normal.

Katie: [00:37:00] So on the histamine front, if you're nodding along right now. I like that word nodding. Here's what you can do to start essentially. A and I know we spoke about this with Jess actually and she went through it slightly in terms of cutting back on high histamine foods, especially after 4:00 PM. I actually put all my clients on a who suffer from Mast cell activation and POTS and things like that. I put them on a low histamine diet. But with that said, you still need to be very self-aware and. As we mentioned at the beginning, building up this Bible of your body because some foods might work well for you that aren't on the low histamine list or whatever.

So it's just about being curious and learning about or having the confidence in yourself to learn about what works well for you. And yeah, Jess went through this a little bit because some foods that are classed as. [00:38:00] Unclean were fine for her.

But on the health spectrum they were terrible. But for this chapter, this very small acute chapter yeah, it's just about having the patience and spending the time really understanding what works well for your body. But cutting back on, on high histamine foods is definitely, a good shout to start with anyway.

Amanda: And recognizing just like the conversation when it comes to gut healing and eliminating possible trigger foods when we're dealing with things like. Autoimmunity and IBD. Just because we're removing something for a time doesn't mean that that becomes your long-term diet. It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to remove high histamine foods for the rest of your life.

It's just the way that I like to look at it is that you have a histamine bucket. It's overflowing with histamines. So not only [00:39:00] do we need to start using strategies to support our body's systems, but we also have to stop pouring histamines into the bucket. So that's where the low histamine foods can start to kind of.

Alleviate some of the symptoms because let's be honest, it can be really hard to do anything and feel better if you're experiencing daily headaches and severe allergies and vertigo. How can you really do anything and, and make progress when you're experiencing those symptoms? Right. So yeah, avoiding those foods for a period of time.

And then also some supplements that I have found really helpful for helping your body in the elimination of excess histamine. I love quercetin. I've used that for the last couple of years. Not. Full-time, but kind of off and [00:40:00] on. Especially I, I find it especially helpful during like allergy season just to give my body a little bit more support.

It's a powerful antioxidant that helps to kind of flush those things from your body. And then you also mentioned like the DAO enzyme is another one that can help support your body

Katie: yes. These are natural antihistamines for sure, but again. Pairing that with working out what your trigger 

Amanda: foods are,

Katie: to create that space in your body to allow it to heal before rebuilding it almost. So you are getting the histamine out of your bucket, allowing your body to recover properly, and then we start to rebuild.

And that is the chapter where you your body to become really resilient. So these things, these trigger foods, they don't affect you moving forward like they used to. You need to view this healing journey as small [00:41:00] chapters of your life. And a lot of the time we get caught up in the belief that we are gonna be this way forever.

And this is just, you know, our destiny and we're gonna feel like this for the rest of our life. But that's not the case. And you can rebuild yourself so that you do become really. Resilient and, and you learn about your body in the process, which is super cool. But even doing things like breath work, which legit reduces histamine through the vagus nerve activation. Really, really will help get into that parasympathetic state. Learning how to relax your CNS so that when stress does happen in life, which it always will, you know what tools to use in your toolbox to bring yourself back and ground yourself. So yeah, those are just a few things that you can try to, to help kickstart your, your journey.

Amanda: And I love that because it is so [00:42:00] easy to get into that mindset of like, I just need another healing protocol, or I just need another supplement, or I just need to eat more perfectly and then I'll feel better. And that's not in my experience. Those tools that we recommend or supplements or dietary adjustments are absolutely helpful and, and part of the process.

But I. If you're not working on those foundational things like learning how to support your nervous system, learning how to cut down the stress in your life because I think so many of us are just running on caffeine and stress hormones daily, and that's just our norm. And we think, we think that we have to do everything ourselves and we think that we have to do everything perfectly.

And, and if I. Don't do it myself. It's not gonna get done perfectly. So I can't ask for help. And especially as [00:43:00] women, I find that we, like I said earlier, are burning the candle at both ends. We're not getting quality sleep, we're not supporting our nervous system or learning how to use these tools.

And then we're so surprised when we get sick or we get diagnosed with a chronic illness, we're like, oh, where did that come from? But as we both reflect on our, our journeys. And we look back, we're like, oh, you know, hindsight's always 2020, but all of the pieces are lined up.

So obviously the sleep conversation is a big one. We've already covered a lot, but there's so much more to say.

So we're gonna take this episode to part two next week and cover a little bit more and hopefully give you some more tips that you can use to start improving your sleep.

Katie: We'll go through some truth bombs and do a bit of Myth busting as well. So essentially why sleep Advice does. Doesn't work when you are healing. So it's a little bit more tailored [00:44:00] to us chronic illness individuals. And on top of that we'll go through some strategies that you can start implementing and mindset shifts to help you rebuild that trust in your body. But actually. Put these things that we are mentioning into real time, which is the hard part. So yeah, tune into part two.