This week on The Less Stress Life Podcast, I am sharing audio from our Live Community Call in January. On this call, we covered topics related to immune support.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
My February Community Q&A will be on February 13th at 1 PM MT/3 PM ET, and it will be much shorter teaching/more time for questions on Iron.
You can register here.
If you want me to look 1:1 at your case, I opened up two calls for Thursday, which will be the cut-off for starting work together in January. OR, you can book a call anytime in January to consider working together in February.
WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
https://www.christabiegler.com/
On IG: instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/
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Loving the podcast? Leave us a review and ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY NOW!
Sharing & reviewing this podcast is the BEST way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East & West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to https://reviewthispodcast.com/lessstressedlife
Have a question that you want to be answered on the Podcast?
Submit it here: https://www.christabiegler.com/questions
Work Together: christabiegler.com/fss
This week on The Less Stress Life Podcast, I am sharing audio from our Live Community Call in January. On this call, we covered topics related to immune support.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
My February Community Q&A will be on February 13th at 1 PM MT/3 PM ET, and it will be much shorter teaching/more time for questions on Iron.
You can register here.
If you want me to look 1:1 at your case, I opened up two calls for Thursday, which will be the cut-off for starting work together in January. OR, you can book a call anytime in January to consider working together in February.
WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
https://www.christabiegler.com/
On IG: instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/
Shop our Favorites
Loving the podcast? Leave us a review and ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY NOW!
Sharing & reviewing this podcast is the BEST way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East & West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to https://reviewthispodcast.com/lessstressedlife
Have a question that you want to be answered on the Podcast?
Submit it here: https://www.christabiegler.com/questions
Work Together: christabiegler.com/fss
Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less stressed life. We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our.
Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.
Okay, so January's community call is about the immune system, but every time we talk about anything, I feel like we have to give a little bit of context before we can go into individual questions, because if you don't have context, then it all just kind of feels like grasping at straws, honestly, or kind of like a whack-a-mole situation.
So when we're thinking about the immune system, we have to remind ourselves. Probably everyone who's here knows this, that a lot of it is in the gut. There's the gall, the gut associated lymphatic tissue that's there. So we have a 70% of the immune system. The stat is that it's in the gut, and so this is something I talk about all the time, but there's a difference between long-term and chronic, what's going on with the immune system, and then what's going on short-term with the immune system.
So we're gonna mostly focus on short-term, but your long-term immune system is gonna affect how often you're getting sick in the short term. And I happen to know there's at least one per, you know, I know a case history on a couple people here. I'll be able to kind of reference like there's certain things that are gonna suppress things and you're gonna look sicker than you should.
Right. Okay. So let's talk about what this image is. So this is Dr. Samuel Yacks immune system. Schematic, and this is kind of a bit of a framework that I work from in practice, so I, I use multiple frameworks, but what I wanna show you is that what's going on in your nervous system will affect what's going on in the immune system and what's going on in the gut will affect what's going on, and that'll contribute to overall inflammatory load.
Sometimes getting like a head injury from like a car accident, a. Oh, what my concussion, things like that, that can be cause some really fascinating inflammatory things that are kind of cool. But all of these feed into each other and then this is a bucket of things that can feed into that inflammatory bucket as well.
But essentially, why am I using this image? Cuz it's an easy way to talk about how the immune system can look a little bit differently. So you'll have this inflammation, it'll talk to the innate immunity or what's going on, the cellular immunity in the gut, and then you'll have an increased decrease of TH one TH two status.
This isn't really. Super important to latch onto too much. Basically, I see people that are a little more TH two dominant, and that can look more like, oh, I get like sinus infections or UTIs or asthma or allergies. It's more like that atopic march. So I see a lot of skin issues and eczema, so I see a lot, a little more of that.
Whereas with TH one status, those people will have. Other chronic things going on, but they actually won't look like they get sick that much. So why again, am I sharing this? Cuz you'll have infection happen. So infection can be chronic low grade stuff you see in the gut. That may not look like a gut symptom.
But when we're talking about what causes chronic immune suppression, if you've got a bunch of imbalance in the gut, which can be a lot of things, it can be bacteria, it can be parasites, it can be fungus, and then. The big one or the one that makes you feel like total poop is mold and mycotoxins, which are everywhere.
And I would say I just spent my entire morning banging my head against the wall on clients that are definitely all dealing with mycotoxin stuff. It's such an annoying thing. And I do wanna just preface not that people here, not that y'all here have any issue with that, but I think it. Just part of probably something I'm called to do is make sure I'm, I'm talking about that a little bit.
One thing I wanna say about when people are dealing with mold and mycotoxin, I've had some really interesting stories with just clients this week, is that you feel like, one, you're getting sick way too often. One of the cases I looked at this morning was the baby was sick every two weeks. That is so abnormal.
That's not normal. Right? And then I had a client who was cleaning her moldy basement with known mold and water damage in the basement. And we've talked about this a lot and we're, you know, I'm trying to help her get it remediated and all these things, and she had a sore throat that just would not go away.
And that is a big, like, it can make you feel like you're sick, kind of out of the blue, or you have this like temporary sore throat thing. So anyway, that's what that can look like. , I'm talking about this cuz this is immune system suppression and it looks like you're gonna get sick too often if you have like normal illnesses maybe once a year, maybe twice a year.
Right? If you share drinks with other people or with kids, it's kind of like a asking to get sick type thing, to be perfectly honest, cuz we kind of dump a lot of stuff in there and then we're kind of taking on all of their germ load almost. But I gave you that story with that baby that was sick every two weeks.
That is absurd. Or getting sick every month, you know, that's kind of like not great. There is a period of time that sucks. As a parent, when your kids are kind of zero to three ish, and by the way, that's a huge time where the immune system's kind of getting built as a child, but that time can kind of be. a bummer just because we are developing our immune system, our we're, our gut is developing and we're getting a ton of exposure, and if we're at daycare, we can have a lot of exposure and we just kind of slob around each other.
Right. That's kind of really what happens. So we can talk more about this for sure, but I just wanna get through these few bullet points. I wanna mention also that immune system suppression. So maybe let's just kind of think back to, well, any time of life that's stressful. Like, let's say you get through the holidays and the holidays I think can be a, a source of stress cuz you may be traveling.
Traveling is a, an induced stressor. It's not bad, it's just an induced stressor. Maybe you have less sleep. So you're not doing quite as well, you're not in your normal environment. You're around a bunch of extra stuff during that time. This is, that's kind of the crux of kind of our conversation today.
That is where you have the opportunity to add support, right? So if I'm in times of stress or opportunity, I'm gonna add support. So we'll talk about that. And then lastly, we can talk about if you wise one I'll, I can leave this one open or we can just go to your questions. Should you stimulate the immune system all the time?
I think experts are getting to agreement that this is a little bit of. Stake that we shouldn't stimulate the immune system constantly with things like, I mean I love elderberry and it's a beauty, but like there should be a break and I think we can apply that kind of context to a lot of things. We don't need to be on something forever.
So I see people on like zinc all the time and vitamin D constantly without a break and that can be a bit of a can of worm. So get into, but I think that that can be a mistake depending on the context and everything. Last little thing and then we'll get into your questions, which is the important part, which would be if I'm giving illness a chance to take hold, I'm traveling, I'm not getting sleep.
I just studied for a test, you know, overnight and then had to take it the next day. If I'm, and by the way, our resilience does decline after like our twenties. There is, there's evidence to support that for sure. So when I have these illness opportunities, I like to do immunoglobulins. That's a fancy word for like colostrum, bovine immunoglobulins.
There is one company, to my knowledge, out of Iowa that produces the raw material for a lot of different immunoglobulin products, but. at the very onset of illness, I like to do much, much, much more than what it calls for on the label for immunoglobulin. So for example, one of the clots that I like on the marker right now, there's a lot of varieties of them.
Progressive laboratories has a good one. I have allergy research group on my counter arm, or AR ma. I don't. I have a code for them, but they have like a pretty tasty one. And if someone's got certain like issues, this is not technically dairy, but it's a pre milk that, that's probably my very favorite thing.
I didn't talk about this, I meant to grab this, but there is a gut test that I do in practice and it has a marker of what? Of immune system cells in the gut lining. It's called secretary iga a or sig i g a, and that is suppressed. Under stress, under pathogens or gut issue stuff. Those are the big, big reasons that it gets suppressed.
So one of the things that brings it back up would be AM immunoglobulins, as well as there's a couple other things that can bring it up as well. Sacra sac, these belardi, and then retinol vitamin A, which is a little bit different conversation. I'm gonna talk about only things that you cannot mess up . So I'm gonna mostly just talk cover immunoglobulins cuz there are things that we can, like, I, I think we probably should not be just like really nilly supplementing forever.
So that's, that I can, we can get into, I wanna kind of be supportive of what you guys want to talk about, but what I can do is give you like some specifics around immunoglobulin support if you want, but essentially a colostrum product, a high quality colostrum product. If you take it in capsules, you can't get as much as if you get it in a powder.
Some people don't like the powder cause it doesn't solve as much. I will tell you that newest brand that I've tried, AR M A R A M R A, I think it is. I have been getting like spammed with advertisements for it, but it is really tasty. They have like an orange flavor and it does mix up a little bit better.
It's not a really cheap supplement, but I would take. two to three times as much as what's recommended on the, like at the time of stress. And to be honest, the first day of illness is when you feel run down. It's not the sore throat day, it's the day before that that you feel run down and your eyes are tired.
If you catch it that day, I think you can mitigate it. I think if you get. It on the sore throat day. I think it's too late. And alls you can do then is try to shorten the duration. So often people are sick for two to three weeks and you can probably, I've been able to shorten a cold to like one week and then looking really good.
So often people are like, oh, I'm pretty good after a week. But really they're hanging on to some sinus stuff for quite a while. There are some other cool things you can do. You can do some nasal irrigation or rinsing with different things and you can add some herbs and different. To that and to try to clear that out faster.
We all wanna get better as fast as possible, but it's kind of a command after stress of our body. So stress suppresses that. Sig i g a, it allows for stuff to come in. It's opportunistic organisms to come in and set up shop, and sometimes it's our called arrest, unfortunately also, so that's not always a bad thing.
So, I welcome you to, you use the raise hand feature so we're not kind of talking over each other. We don't have this weird like all over conversation to, I would love to have a dialogue with you if you guys want. Otherwise I'm gonna share my screen and look at the questions that are there. Okay. So, or I can call on you as well because Andrew's got her camera on and she's my first one.
Maybe I wanna ask her if she has any questions. That's fine. The rest of you might be listening passively cause I don't have any of your faces, so that's okay. . All right. Just let me know if you'd like to unmute or you can just throw your question in. The chat is fine as well. Okay. So we'll go through these questions and then we'll kind of wrap up.
I'll, I'll take, I'll go through questions for about 15 minutes. Okay. So these are again, just the ones that, that are submitted, I think these ones from January the, this is the raw, raw submissions. So I'm gonna pick the ones that are actually most related to our topic because like this one that was submitted in January.
This one was how to deal with low cortisol and weight gain and fatigue and no sleep. I mean, that's a big conversation and I think I covered that one in last month's, community hours, which was all about adrenals. So I'll go to Maryanne's question, which was how do we control winter allergies so they don't turn into something else like a cold?
Just the way you ask that is kind of an interesting question. First of all, I always am questioning like, what is up with winter allergies? I would want, if she was here, I would ask her where she lives, , right? Because a lot of places, things would be dormant. If she does have true wind, her allergies, and she's in a place where things are dormant, it's probably like dust mites or internal stuff.
And then at that point I'm kind of thinking about everything in the environment. I might ask about a lot of other things as well. This is why I spent a few moments talking about mold a little while ago. Like, do you feel worse when you're inside? if you feel worse when you are inside for a while, you maybe wanna look at the environment.
I always think a low-hanging fruit or an easy thing to do is to get those vents cleaned. It's like maybe $300. But if you have never had your HVAC or vents cleaned, it's probably time. I have been in my house for about 10, 12 years and I had it done for the first time this year and uh, it needed it a long time ago.
So that can make a big difference for people. And I think it depends again on what the allergies are. Is there like a pet involved or anything? Can you add an air purifier? Because I guess when you have have allergies and you get this sinusitis, then it's like, it's like you're already kind of suppressed and things can happen.
I would also maybe recommend not just a Zyrtec type or histamine blocking nasal spray, but one that maybe like kills bacteria, et cetera, so that you could do some. I think something that everyone can do is nasal irrigation, so, There's a lot of different bottles. You don't have to use a Neti Pot and turn your head upside down, but there's a lot of different ones.
And if you use a hypertonic solution, I have a podcast episode with a lovely, lovely ear, nose, and throat doctor, Dr. Hannah, I think her name is, and I can't remember all the details of what the name of it is, but. Hypertonic, that means like two salt packets can help clear that out a lot better. So I hope that helps Maryanne.
So Alexandra, I'm gonna prioritize anyone who's here, whoever submits a question or wants to talk . And again, I would really welcome your dialogue if you guys wanna unmute or raise your hand and ask a question. And if you just joined, sorry, you missed all the context to the beginning, you'll have to catch it on that re.
So Alexandria said, can you take colostrum with dairy intolerance? So every question someone asks, which is why I like to give context, is like, let's open another can of worms. . If it's a dairy allergy, which is an IgE, actual allergy, like somewhat more anaphylactic, those people probably are not gonna do well.
I've had like, Almost an indiscernible amount of clients that have had really bad reactions to colostrum, and usually it's loose stool with kids. If they're not reacting very well to it, they're probably gonna get a rash around their mouth. You can do a little, like, if you're kind of nervous about it, you can take some colostrum, maybe put it in some oil or in some water you can rub it on a thin-skinned dairy like inside of the arm.
And if it irritates it, if the skin is irritated, it's probably on the outside, it's probably gonna be irritated on the. Colostrum is really cool because it's got some killing properties and it's a very broad spectrum. I, I gravitate toward colostrum versus bovine serum immunoglobulins because it's a little bit more of like this nature made, cool, magical thing, right?
Where it's got all these different things. It does have some killing properties, which is kind of cool and interesting. So sometimes you can have a little bit of intestinal discomfort if you take like a huge dose, but it's not always bad. Anytime there's kind of a negative reaction. We wanna slow down our dos.
Reduce it a little bit and retry. I've had people have to try pretty small doses of this, so I think it depends on the context. You're welcome to unmute yourself, Alexander, if you wanna add anything to it. But I usually, the one of the companies I used to use pretty exclusively was called Sovereign Laboratories, and they had us.
Small bag for like seven bucks. They no longer do that. So it used to be really easy for people to recommend and try. I don't think it's gonna hurt you to get some and for you to use it if your kiddo can't use it. But people who can't tolerate dairy, colostrum is premi. So even if you can't tolerate dairy, it usually works out okay.
Okay. Thank you. My daughter had a dairy intolerance starting in infancy with like bloody stools and stuff, so Oh yeah. I'm wanting to help support her gut because she seems to be really prone to getting sick. Yeah. And. , but I also am like, oh, I'm a little nervous about giving her the classroom. I think I already have math at my house, but yeah, I've just been so nervous to do it.
Totally. Has she, and I don't know how old she is, has she ever been, has she ever been exposed to dairy since and had bloody stool? Um, she's been exposed to it and she tends to have like, kind of like a histamine response. Mm-hmm. , like, it's like a delayed three day usually. Mm-hmm. and she. Seems like she, like her eyes are running, she's coughing, she can't breathe, lots of mucus, and so she's never tested positive for a dairy allergy.
Mm-hmm. , but it seems like she almost has like an allergy response, even though her allergy tests are negative. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I can totally understand. As a parent, you don't wanna cause an insult to injury, so especially in school-aged kids, when you're like, oh, I don't want you to miss like a week of school because you Oh, totally.
You've got a dairy. Totally. I don't have a lot of negative things about said classroom, but even when you try, I won't go off on a tangent on a story, but , but sometimes even allergy tests, like what you experience is most important. I would try it externally, especially if you already have some. So try that first.
You can try it on a thin skin, dairy or around the mouth, and then a couple brands. So I only super familiar with. Professional brands typically, but if you wanna do one that's derived from serum, a k a blood and not the pre milk or the preco, like it's not dairy technically, so it's not really classified the same.
So usually it's, it goes a little bit better. But still, just in case, if you wanna do bovine serum S b I protect from, I think it's Ortho molecular mega i g G 2000 by Microbiome Labs. Which is in powder or capsule, I would, depending on how old I would take it outta the capsule anyway, and, and try it and put it in anything, it's fine.
Okay. There might be one more I can't think of right now, but they're all from the same, like they're all the same raw material. Okay. To my knowledge. And those are the ones that are blood derived. Mm-hmm. ? Yeah. Or like they're serum. Mm-hmm. , sorry. Yep. Serum blood. Same thing. Yep. Yep. Okay. Great. Try that. and then there are some like ones, so like Microbiome Labs has made this mega OSA product and that one has like few extra ingredients If you've already got this kind of stuff going on, start slower.
There are some things you could do otherwise. So like Espi can help improve Secretary iga. I just think colostrum and am immunoglobulin or superior. Yeah, and I have like a, I am a dietician but I've always worked in icu, so. Mm-hmm. that doesn't totally. Do you wanna. But I do have an account to be able to get some of these products.
Cool. So I'll try and if you wanna talk about your daughter and it's annoying you, you can always book a call with me if you would like. So it's open like a handful of times a year and it is right now, so Great. Thank you so much. Yeah, you bet. So that was nice. Thank you for unmuting and asking your question and typing it in.
I appreciated that. I always, it's like a little nicer to talk to a real human than myself , so, all right, I'll keep going until, unless anyone else pops in to ask a question here. Okay. So Becca asked, how do I help my four year old and one-year-old not be sick constantly and support their immune systems?
Don't we all want that all the time? So whatever we can be doing to support overall gut health, From a generic perspective, it's okay to do some probiotics here and there, you know, to get plenty of sleep, to eat a whole food diet. All of those basics, right? And then to consider what are these outliers? I, I just have to be like, give good context before I dive into like what's the fancier stuff you can do?
And then with that, I think that adding some classroom or adding, like, again, being aware of where. Stressors come in or where things are not as ideal is, is the best thing you can do. And with, I think once you're like, get over that hump of like three, four years old, it gets a lot better. I think if you're in daycare then that's kind of the tricky part, right?
So same advice that I was recommending before, which would be immunoglobulin, but anything you can do that supports overall gut health, which is both food, it's like everything, right? It's your food, your environment, your sleep, and, and all types of things. Plenty of sunshine, all kinds of stuff. How do you, you know, possibly air purifier any possible way you can get fresh air and like play in the dirt and all those things that naturally support microbiota development and immune system development as well.
Those are all positive, so sometimes it just really sucks when one gets it and the next one gets it. . Okay. Carolina said how to support children, toddler's, immune system, as well as in pregnancy. So I just kind of talked about that. But then in pregnancy it's actually, so again, the, the thought behind giving you one recommendation that it's okay for almost everyone is that that's totally safe in pregnancy too.
So immunoglobulins are totally safe in pregnancy. We can't mess that up by taking it long term. So I'm not gonna recommend some random other stuff that's like stimulating long. Okay. And then Ian asked about a nose and throat spray. What kind? So there's multiple kinds of nose and throat sprays on the lower end, which are not bad.
They're good. So one you could use all the time that wouldn't hurt anything is be propolis spray. That's got some cool antifungal properties and as a sort like it's got some other good nutritive properties. So that's kind of like a every day doesn't hurt. Teach your kids. And by the way, these colostrum sprays, they do come in a spray too.
I don't know how I feel about them being as effective as the powder or capsules. I think powder is trumps all the things cuz you can just take more without it feeling like a lot. But I'll just throw that in there. So the propolis spray is nice, and then Neutro biotic has a few things. They have a nasal spray and a throat spray.
You can usually find like, uh, different throat sprays at like your health food store. But that's one that I like that I can order pretty easily. But I've bought different ones that I find that have these different ingredients, like menthols and, and things that are kind of soothing to the. What are some other ones?
I recommend this. I had this lovely woman named Jane Barlow on my podcast one time talking all about Lomaia and they make a really cool throat spray also. And then what else? There is a, sometimes companies change their names. There is another company that makes some interesting stuff called Ion Baum. I don't recommend them quite as much, but they kind of make an interesting throat in nasal spray.
That one I think is like neutral, not gonna hurt anything. We don't wanna just take antimicrobials constantly. I think that one's okay. But I have mixed reviews on like where people kind of land on, on success with it. Oh, what else? And then there can be some silver throat sprays. I don't think it's good.
Like my parents, bless their hearts, take sovereign silver a lot, which I think is a terrible idea. But I don't, I try not to give unsolicited advice that they will not take. But anyway, doing a colostrum like, or not a colostrum, but a um, silver throat spray. or a nasal rinse could be good occasionally. Oh good.
There's questions in the chat. Thanks. Sorry I missed that. Okay, so Brenda had to go, but looking forward to the coordinator when I leave without saying anything. Thank you Brenda. Ashley said how much vitamin A should an an adult load up on the start of sickness or what about dosing for a child? So this is a good question and one I'm like slightly more cautious to answer, but I will answer it and just to give the context.
we were talking about sig i g a or secretary i g a, that's at low immune system status or the cells in the gut that we get some markers on, on our stool tests, and they kind of show us like, Hey, how's the immune system doing? And so they are supported by immunoglobulin, Sacra, Mises, Belardi, and then vitamin A I alluded to earlier, and that's what Ashley's talking about.
And Ashley knows this. I know Ashley. So with vitamin A, this is retinol base. And so. Big picture conversation is that vitamin D usually gets a lot of attention and vitamin A retinol doesn't get a lot of attention. So again, backing up to the big picture context, beta Carine is the orange stuff that we get from our food, right?
But our liver converts this into retinol, so pretty much. to get food-based sources of retinol, they would have to be animal products cuz our liver, just like cholesterol, right? It, it's converted in the liver. It's not something that comes from plants, it only comes from animals. So retinol is the active form that we actually use in the body.
It is not get given enough attention for how awesome it is for the immune system. The tricky thing about taking vitamin D long term is that it suppresses vitamin A or competes with vitamin A. So I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I just think that. Place time and a place and we tend to like over supplement D and then cause other cascades of problems.
And so with vitamin A, technically can you overdose vitamin A? You betcha. It's totally possible. So this is why I have to like, uh, use extreme caution answering this in kind of a public forum and. Space because all of this has to go through their liver. And so I would never run a recommend. So in a more public forum, I would maybe say 10,000 IUs of it, m and a short term.
And when I say short term, maybe up to a month, but maybe more like two weeks. Right Ashley? And feel free to unmute if you want. What do I do personally more than. , right. I do more than that, but just since this is gonna go , this is gonna be published publicly. I'm gonna stop at 10,000. I use able to go higher.
Yeah, you bet. But do you wanna add anything to that so you get each, I just wanted to say thank you. I remember us talking about it and I wrote it down somewhere. How much? I just remember it was a lot of vitamin A and I wrote it down more than that, . I wrote it down and I'm like, crap, I can't find it. My husband was getting.
A cold, which by the way, I did not get. So I'm like, oh my gosh, it's awesome. But he started to get it and I'm like, well, you better go take a lot of vitamin A. And he was, he's like, how much? And I said, ah, I can't remember. . . Yeah. If you're doing it pretty short term, so I won't like drop any bigger numbers, but I'll just say like, if I'm doing it to myself and I can.
Kind. I'm an aggressive person personally and I do things like that and I can be experiment on myself cuz I know what I'm doing, but publicly, I, I don't want to cause any issue or injury or unrest. Right. So, but 10,000 I use for a couple of weeks. I don't think it's gonna be an issue, but, oh, I'm sorry. I need to put one really big red flag out here.
You should not be taking a toll ton of like supplemental isolated vitamin A if you're pregnant or could be pregnant technically, the research around that is with the synthetic forms of Vitamin Acuta is technically a type of vitamin A are really super high dose, and then there's these vitamin A creams.
Can cause birth defects. So it's kind of a serious, it's like a bl, like we have to be careful, but I think that comes from these synthetic forms. But just to be careful where you don't ever recommend high-dose vitamin. I mean, that's just so I have to be careful when I talk about some of those unique qualities.
So colostrums aren't gonna hurt anyone. Make them take a whole bunch of that. Right. And I think nasal rinsing is really under undervalued as well. Does that help A little bit. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, you bet. All right. I'm gonna, actually, I can keep going on these questions, but Andrea, perfect. I was like, and I'm gonna call on a few people that were here.
I'd rather talk to you guys. Okay. I know you mentioned about being careful of, you know, hyping up the immune system by taking a lot of supplements for the immune system all the time. But is there something like just maintenance that would be good? Like, I don't know, ma, a multivitamin, but you would need something more, I guess, specific than that?
Yeah. This what would be best. Yeah. So let me back up and give a little more context to that. So the conversation around just stimulating the immune system and I went to a whole seminar where we, this was kind of part of the discussion. It's like stimulating the immune system is not exactly what we're going for.
It's like how do we just like improve the overall terrain? And so this is where I like to always talk about the lawn is like kind of our main analogy. Like how do you make the soil nice? Right? You don't just go stick nitrogen on it constantly to like, to make it grow, you burn it. So our bodies are so similar to nature, right?
So we wanna think about like what improves the terrain and the environment, AKA the soil. So what improves the host, right? So all of the things that are free. Right and abiding by rhythm. Those are actually the most underrated maintenance things that you could possibly do. So I don't wanna like move past saying that because it's so critical, especially in this season.
I don't know where you live, Andrea, but I'm looking at five foot snow drifts out my back window, and it's so easy, and I see this a lot when I'm seeing clients. They'll be like, oh, you spent zero time outside, you know, and it's hard for us to do, but, so anyway, I just need to talk about all those free things.
And then from a maintenance perspective, . I think adding in supportive things, and this is kind of the same question as there's this client who asked me this question at the beginning of our program. She said, what if, like, what are some things that, like, there's so much we're gonna learn about and all of these things we're gonna do.
What are like some of the things that can support us forever? I'm paraphrasing it, but I, I referenced the question a lot. I'm like, what are things I always like to talk about? What are some things you can't mess up on your own? Right? Like when we're doing it, that's really important to me. , like, don't just go stay on sync forever.
You're gonna create a copper deficiency and then you're gonna have a. Energy and ATP problem for the rest of your, you're gonna have a lot of issues actually if you do that. So maintenance-wise, what can you do to support your gut from a maintenance perspective? Right? So if I go and indulge in all the things, I might do some gut corrective things, cuz that's gonna be the backbone.
Of my immune system, right? And I'm gonna like get back to after I go to my family holiday and whatever and indulge and enjoy everything, I'm gonna like do my 80 20, right? Where like my normal life is like really solid. Like that is maintenance in my opinion, to be honest, right? Perfectly honest. And then from there you can like inject cool, awesome things.
What is the maintenance? This actually just came to me and I don't think this is harmful. What is the maintenance That is really lovely through the immune system. I freaking love beneficial. Cortis and beta glucans, the prebiotic material from the whole fruiting body of the mushrooms. But like Corti, SEPs, and chaga are some of the ones that come to mind for like being really immune powerhouses.
Why are they. Because the beta glucan feeds a good bacteria in the gut is how I think that mechanism is working. But sometimes I've had some like pretty awesome success with beneficial mushrooms. So I think those are really cool. If you wanna get a little fancy to pull in. If I go out and like eat all the things and enjoy all the things that I come back and kind of rebalance with some colostrum things.
Yeah, it doesn't hurt anything. Right? Like I can do something like that. Those things. I do recommend elderberry and things like that as needed for clients, but I don't say, people are always like, should I stay on this forever? I'm like, there is really nothing and I think that you have to stay on forever.
Right. But to go back to the question that I never really answered, which was, Hey, what's always gonna be supportive, supporting your mitochondria? And supporting what's going on in your stress and adrenals. And then supporting drainages are always gonna be important because once that gets backed up, you have toxic burden buildup.
And then it just, I think that's opportunity for more stuff. Like everything doesn't really work and you just feel like generally crappy. So I hope that helps a little bit. It wasn't like, here, go take this and you're. Life will be changed. But I do think beneficial mushrooms have a lot of potential and awesomeness.
They haven't, I haven't seen them on a hit list of like, Hey, this could really overstimulate TH one or TH two and cause an imbalance type thing. Cuz that's kind of what the immunologists are, are like, Hey, you probably shouldn't just be in, you know, the last two years gave people a lot of fodder for like adding everything they could to stimulate all the time, whereas like, well, Let's watch our stress and like, let's go to like the basics and let's correct our gut health and all those things.
So for me, I have to like always have to talk about foundations before I get too fancy. Does that help, that answer that question a little bit. Cool. Very good. Yeah. Awesome. Anyone else live in local? And Allison, I know you, uh, came late, so you Oh, wait. On the functional mushrooms that you were talking about.
is it like an appeal form or you're recommending eating? I mean, of course. Oh yeah. Eating the mushrooms would be fantastic, but it'd be, it'd be cool if you could find those. Right. And, and granted that's, that's always like the holy grail of us, like procuring things from different places. Like, ah, I found my purveyor mushrooms, found my purveyor fish.
I found my purveyor, whatever. But that's a slow, steady, lifelong thing. So there are brands that make high quality mushrooms. I have a nice episode about this with. Chilton. It's an older episode about mushrooms. It's lovely. It's a great nerd episode. And we talk all about fruiting body being important and he actually, his company provides the raw materials for other supplements, but the company is also real mushrooms.com.
I'm always trying new things. That's kind of an older episode. There's always new things like I did try this coffee esque product recently that a past client's business had been sharing. And it was so overpriced, but yet so delicious and lovely and I felt so sustained throughout the day. so I could drop names, right?
I try to be careful about name dropping since we're gonna make this public, right? But I think a lot of times the mushroom powders, if you can get something that does taste good, that's great. A lot of 'em do taste like dirt. And there are ones that are in pills, so. all that said, and I would say that the creator of host defense has a little different feeling about like what's appropriate.
So a couple notes about mushrooms, is that that fruity body, that's the actual matter of the mushroom, right? And then when they're making some supplements and things, they will like grow a yeast film. And that's called mycelium. And that's what some people are selling. And so I think fruiting body makes more sense.
And Danielle said she loves mountain reserves. Mountain reserves has all kinds of really cool things. I didn't know they had mushroom stuff. I have been looking for like the freeze dried kind that I can like add to soups and things, right? Like what can I do to make it a little more enjoyable? But I have real mushrooms.
Defender in my cabinet, there's another really tiny company who makes really high quality stuff called Cultivate Elevate, and he has some mushroom products as well. But again, they're gonna taste like dirt. You gotta mix them in with some other things that make 'em taste good or find some other, like if you see a product and you're like, Hey, that looks cool.
It's $30 for 15 packets. But it turns out sometimes they can be kind of delicious. So anyway, we could go a lot of directions. There's always something new and cool out, but. Hope that helps a little bit. There's multiple ways to get that in. Right. Do you wanna make it food-based or do you wanna make it supplement based?
I think it just depends on the person, what they're willing to do. All right. I will, I'll do like a few more q and a and then we'll move on. I, I'll see if any of these are a little bit different than what we've already talked about. Is healthy food in certain supplements, a way to avoid viruses, like cold viruses in covid, or building immunity, actually getting in contact with viruses from time to time.
I would just say like, you probably can't escape from everything no matter what. And to very simply answer the question, yes. And the only thing I really wanna say that's different for this question is that viruses are simply opportunistic. So if you give them the opportunity to grow, right? So if the, if the soil.
Is not growing good grass in a certain area, or you've stressed it out in a certain area. Right. Then this can just come in and take up residents. I mean, that's why I have two people next to each other. Um, one per, you know, we don't have the same makeup of what's going on. So basically what's our takeaway as if stuff like this is happening?
Like if we're, we've caught covid like more than once, or we are having things that. , you know, and it's tricky if you travel a lot or you're working on humans versus working from home or whatever. Like there's definitely variables there, but depending on the situation and if you're getting those types of things a lot, I just want you to think, hey, there could be something a little bit deeper.
And that's where we're going back to the very beginning of this recording and considering what makes up that an. Innate immune system. Yeah, it's made up in the gut. Gut associated lymphatic tissue and your stress chemistry. So yeah, those are the backbones of the things that I work on when I work with people one-on-one, which I feel like is probably a good time to say I am taking one-on-one clients right now.
I only take them. Four to six times a year, depending on how the year goes. So right now that my calendar's open through February one, which we probably will not get this re up on our podcast until after that. If you're here, you'll get this recording. Does anyone else who's here live have anything else you wanna ask before we wrap this?
And while I let you consider that, there's one question here that says, I'm treating mold infection, but my white blood cell count is very low. Anyways, to improve that, I mean truly the mold infection is a poison, and so when you're working on mold stuff and it's getting dumped into your gut and liver, it is a true poison and there's like nothing off limits that it will affect.
And so once you move through that, things will usually bounce back and get better. I think that's the important thing to state there. Actually now on Spotify. So if you go to our Instagram page, if you're on krista bigler.com/links, there's a link and it goes to these gatherings or these piles of like, we have a mold and parasite playlist now.
And so there's a couple episodes in there that if, if we're ever kind of wondering about mold stuff, I re suggest you listen to those. And the one episode is called could it be a Mile to Moderate Mold thing? Cause that's kind of my, I feel like I spend a lot of. Helping people kind of discover that that's an issue or a past issue.
I'm sure somebody else share my daughter's story about this, but it can be a past issue that's kind of chronic and annoying and then it feels like you're getting sick a lot, so it may not be a current one. She had exposure for sure before she was five, cuz in her medical records there's little pieces that I pulled together from that.
So, All right. I don't see any more questions in the chat. Thank you for being here. I hope that was helpful to you guys and if you guys have suggestions for a topic, please ask. Happy to. Really, I let this be informed by what I've seen as an issue or what people are asking about. Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission.
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