From eNewsletter 1/18/2021
DID YOU KNOW that many sleep experts suggest this cognitive behavioral therapy technique if you find yourself awake and worrying about falling back to sleep? It's recommended that you think quietly about staying awake rather than trying to actively fall asleep. Be comfortable with being awake. This prevents you from getting excessively anxious about being awake and paradoxically, can help you fall back to sleep. There many other techniques and natural substances to help with falling sleep and achieving quality sleep, but rarely addressed is what to do when you are having trouble falling asleep or falling back asleep.
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Have a happy, healthy day! Steve and Bonnie Minsky
VINDICATION FOR IBS SUFFERERS
Steve and Bonnie: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic and sometimes debilitating condition leaving many people in pain on a regular basis. Making things worse, doctors don’t have a great handle on IBS and often diagnosis it based only on a patient’s symptoms.
Authors of a new study in Nature have confirmed what many integrative practitioners have known for a while: intolerant foods cause a series of events in the immune response that activates mast cells in the gut. While mast cells are usually associated with allergy and the production of histamine, in the case of IBS, the immune response only occurs in the part of the intestine infected by pathogenic bacteria.
This is why in many IBS patients, antihistamines help with symptoms, but never get to the root of the cause. Getting rid of pathogenic bacteria, mostly by removing offending foods and infusing the gut with beneficial bacteria (probiotics), is what usually remediates IBS. In cases where this does not work, hypnotherapy has found to be extremely helpful.
The other aspect of mast cell-derived IBS that was not addressed in this study, but must always be addressed in all mast cell-related disorders, is the inability to produce enough histaminase enzyme to break down histamine. Just like we need enzymes to break down and absorb our food (protease, amylase, lipase), we need enzymes such as histaminase to break down histamine. When we do not do this properly, you get lingering histamine symptoms like those seen in those with food allergies or IBS.
We have ways of helping you discover how well you break down histamine through genetic screening. If there is a problem, there is a histaminase supplement that can be taken orally to help you break down histamine, which is always better than blocking it like antihistamine medications do.
The authors acknowledge that we are dealing with a real disease. They state, "at one end of the spectrum, the immune response to a food antigen is very local, as in IBS. At the other end of the spectrum is food allergy, comprising a generalized condition of severe mast cell activation, with an impact on breathing, blood pressure, and so on.”
It will always come down to the foods you consume and how your body reacts to them. Knowing the offending foods, whether true food allergy or food intolerance, is absolutely critical in mitigating most IBS, and mast cell disorders for that matter.
For all those who have been told by all your physicians that there is nothing wrong with you or it's all in your head, this study provides evidence that there is a scientific explanation for why this is happening.
If you have unresolved IBS or suspect a mast cell disorder, we suggest you test for true food allergies through an allergist AND food intolerances through a health professional such as ourselves, as well as genetic screening.
BONNIE'S QUINOA BOWL RECIPES
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