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Welcome to Chinese Medicine in the modern world, a space where ancient wisdom meets today's most complex health challenges. I am Dr. Kelly Smick. Join us as we explore holistic dermatology, chronic inflammation, and root cause healing through the lens of traditional Chinese medicine.

On today's episode, we are talking about spring allergies, seasonal allergic rhinitis, the liver, and why your immune system is overreacting In Chinese medicine, the spring is associated with the organ, the liver. And spring is really the season of renewal and rebirth and fresh things sprouting out in nature.

This is the real new year. I really think it was a patriarchal [00:01:00] construct that tried to convince us to amp up our productivity and really go for it. New Year, new you. On January 1st when it's cold, and we should all still be hunkering down and in storage mode. At least that's how it goes in Chinese medicine terms.

And it makes good sense in terms of living with the seasons, especially if you're living in a climate where you experience all four different seasons and the days are shorter and the nights are longer and you need more in the way of. Rest and storage. When we come into the spring, our bodies start to shift.

When we are in tune with our natural bio rhythms and the changing of the seasons, and we are optimally healthy, there are things we can do to align ourselves with that and maximize our overall wellbeing, not just our productivity. So. That being said, if you find yourself sliding into spring full of [00:02:00] congestion and sneezing and itchy, watery eyes, there are a number of different organ systems that can be affected.

A number of different patterns at play that we can differentiate, but I will bring it home over and over again to the liver because it's something that is foundational and. Largely within your control and this concept that when people have allergies, it's just the way it is and you're gonna tough it out through the spring by hopping yourself up on antihistamines all the time.

You don't have to live like that and suffer like that. And antihistamines in terms of, you know, all the different, over the counter medications you could take. It's not the end of the world. They do their thing. When people come into me and they're severely allergic and they need these things to help with their quality of life, that's not the end of the world to me.

It's not hugely in my way. I don't need people off them right away. So [00:03:00] these medications often contain something called diphenhydramine, which can make you feel really knocked out. And if you take the non-drowsy version so you don't feel knocked out, then you can feel really speedy and hopped up and it's another thing that your liver has to metabolize anyway, so we might as well start working at the root. Allergic rhinitis is the technical term for. Allergies that affect the nose basically. So we can have seasonal allergic rhinitis or like spring allergies, hay fever as it's colloquially termed, or perennial, which means year round.

Allergic rhinitis that is impacted by things like pet dander, dogs, cats, horses. Dust. Um, of course different allergens can get kicked up at different times of the year. People can have this allergic rhinitis [00:04:00] response to mold, which is a little more common in the fall. And then pollen is the big one in the spring.

And in the summertime it's more grasses. So depending on your particular, you know, proclivities, your sensitivities, you can have this impacting you all year round, and then it can worsen considerably in the spring. You can have it only in the spring, but at the end of the day, if this is a persistent issue for you, it's indicating the fact that there's a deeper underlying imbalance.

Seasonal allergies are so commonplace. That the incidence is about 25% of the population in industrialized nations in this day and age, which is a huge increase from where it was prior to the industrial revolution. So there's not more cherry trees, [00:05:00] there's just more overactive immune systems and overburdened livers that can't deal with the onslaught of burden.

That we have to face daily in terms of personal care products, any kind of exogenous chemical, our food supply, everything that has conspired to jam this up. I would say even, you know how fashionable. BINGE drinking alcohol has become, it really didn't used to be such a big societal player where our whole social structure was built around this.

I mean, the tides are starting to change. People recognize that this is problematic, but we really don't pay much in the way of attention to liver health until there's a serious problem where we have cirrhosis, where we have elevated liver enzymes, A-L-T-A-S-T. These types of things. [00:06:00] And again, why I love Chinese medicine so much is they're able to pick up on patterns of imbalance and things that are going a little bit awry in the system before it becomes a major problem.

So Chinese medicine has some real answers here, and I think a real place in our modern world in terms of prevention and taking. Burden off of our mainstream healthcare systems and improving people's quality of life overall. And something that I see that's very practical is allergies. Chinese medicine works a treat for these types of things, both the acute symptoms and the underlying patterns of imbalance that are playing into this.

Like I said, it's not just the liver. There can be other organs associated, especially the lungs obviously. And you know, the nose is an extension of a respiratory system in our lungs and Chinese medicine, so there's a link there. But, [00:07:00] um, this is wonderfully effective medicine and for me. If your liver's congested and burdened and it can't break down histamine adequately, then you're gonna have these symptoms.

And because 25% of the population has it now, most people, especially if they're not very badly affected by it. Seasonally, just go, oh, it's just allergies. It's just allergies. Well, do you wanna spend your life sniffling and sneezing and having itchy, watery eyes and needing medication every day and just thinking it's something that you inevitably have to deal with?

Or do you want to try and. Right, the ship. So I see this condition a lot, primarily because I treat other conditions that are allergic in nature. I treat a lot of eczema, I treat a lot of asthma and my, you know, allergic people from having allergic or atopic asthma and eczema will have either an exacerbation of those symptoms in the springtime when [00:08:00] seasonal allergies come online or.

Things shift and the seasonal allergies in the spring are intolerable for them. So, um, it's well worth it to treat the whole system and get your immune system unburdened for a variety of reasons, not just your comfort in the spring, but for your overall health.

So the liver histamine connection is important because people demonize histamine and we talk about, you know, MCAS, which is mast cell activation syndrome, and I don't think much of. Any of this kind of talk, I don't think much about low histamine diets. This idea that we can eat foods that are lower in histamine, somehow it's gonna decrease our overall histamine load and it's gonna be helpful for allergic conditions.

And I think that way of thinking is disempowering for people and another way of trying to avoid [00:09:00] things external to us rather than dealing with the internal root driver of this because. We can't always control our environment. We can do our best. We can try to eat a clean life, like clean diet and live a clean lifestyle.

But at the end of the day, if the liver can't adequately break down histamine, you're going to have issues. It's a normal physiological response. And if your liver can't clean things up, then. You have a problem. Your liver is responsible for detoxifying chemicals, processing inflammatory byproducts, breaking down histamine, and when the liver is very sluggish or overloaded in the Chinese medicine, we call it liver chi stagnation.

If it's been stagnant for long enough, we can say liver chi stagnation generating heat. And I always make this analogy. Between, an engine with no oil in it that's been grinding for a long time and eventually starts [00:10:00] smoking because we're not greasing it properly. It doesn't have what it needs to perform its tax properly.

The liver's sluggish or overloaded. The histamine's going to linger around. Immune reactions are escalated and symptoms amplify, so we can go between having a congested liver. To all of a sudden that congested liver is generating inflammation and it's, I think at this point, upwards of one third of people now have fatty liver, which is madness.

To me, and maybe it's always been there and it's just that the diagnostics have become a little bit more in tuned. We're more concerned about these things now. But even if you take that information into an allopathic provider, there's really no treatment for it. Just say, oh, eat well.

And well, what does eating well mean? What does the liver actually need to thrive properly? [00:11:00] And. , Pull off all of its myriad functions that it does for us. Is this unsung hero of all of these different functions in our body? What does it need to thrive? What is gonna get in its way and when does it need treatment?

And herbal treatment can often be pretty profoundly life changing for people.

In Chinese medicine terms, the liver governs smooth flow, detoxification, immune regulation. It houses and filters our blood and spring is liver season and spring is associated with the color green. The liver loves green things. It actually thrives off like bitter greens. Are very helpful for the liver.

The liver loves a little bit of sour. That is the flavor that is associated with the spring from a Chinese medicine standpoint. So [00:12:00] you have a little bit of lemon in your water in the morning. It's gonna stimulate your bile ducts. It's going to ease off that stagnation. It's gonna make sure things are moving and.

Our body is intelligent, and I think there's a major philosophical and theoretical disconnect between a lot of things in the allopathic model that say, you know, your body's behaving badly, punish it, shut it down, suppress it somehow. Rather than looking at why this very intelligent system is struggling to do what it naturally does, what's in the way?

Why all of a sudden does 25% of the population have a problem with seasonal allergies? Where prior to the industrial revolution it was not a problem. Hmm. And how do we start addressing these things? And we're really looking at the canary in the coal mine. 'cause the immune system is very important and.

The immune system's, [00:13:00] number one, when it comes to quote unquote autoimmune conditions, all kinds of chronic inflammatory problems and cancer. All of our chronic degenerative processes in our body require a healthy immune system to like get you outta the woods, and there's usually an immune problem. When we're looking at those types of conditions, so I'm a big proponent of anything you can do to unburden your immune system when you recognize that you have an allergic or autoimmune or chronic inflammatory issue, any variety.

'cause chronic inflammation is your immune system as well. Get it handled. Give yourself the best shot you have for not developing one of these conditions. That is basically the scourge of our 21st century.

So seasonal allergies are connected to other allergic conditions and something we call the atopic or allergic triad. The allergic three is allergic eczema and [00:14:00] allergic asthma and allergic rhinitis or hay fever, seasonal allergies, year long. Allergies that affect. Our nose, which is the root word, Latin rhino, that's where it comes from.

And all of these things are connected. And when I'm treating something like eczema and spring comes along and lights up the immune system more considerably than it had been in previous months, everything tends to get worse all at once. These things are intimately. Linked and definitely respond to changes in environment, seasonal shifts, and diet hugely.

But it's not that they are always coming together or that intimately linked, but it is very common that they are, and again, a major [00:15:00] indicator that our immune systems can't deal with what is burdening our system. And that burden is primarily in the liver. And there's a whole school of thought these days, which is in the functional medicine world, which points at, oh, the gut is the root of everything.

It's always the gut. The gut, the gut. And some people, I suppose, look at the gut and and think the liver is an extension of it. It's an accessory organ of digestion. I think the liver is a heck of a lot more than an accessory organ of digestion. So to me. Not everything is the gut in our elementary canal, and a lot of chronic degenerative disease processes start in the liver.

It's manufacturing, cholesterol and bile. If it's too jammed up, it starts depositing cholesterol where it shouldn't be. It is heart disease, autoimmunity, [00:16:00] cancer. I if you can keep your liver clean, you've just given yourself a big step up in terms of your overall health, and I think it's imperative for everybody to do a liver cleanup every spring.

For your general health and wellbeing, but especially important if you're dealing with one of these, allergic conditions. People are amazed when they come to see me and we start working with them and we're giving them the right tools and the protocols and we unburden their system and they've come into me for some unrelated thing and all of a sudden, oh hey.

I have one patient that said I, I used to have antihistamines in my golf bag all the time and be taking them all the time, constantly uncomfortable and sneezing and rubbing my nose and having itchy eyes and popping antihistamines all the time. And he is like, oh, I just realized I don't do that anymore.

Well, what a wonderful side effect of real holistic medicine, but I can't stress enough that it's important to give your liver a, a fighting chance. It's important for your [00:17:00] hormonal health and your breast health and your mental, emotional health.

If you're looking for signs that your liver is congested or you have liver cheese stagnation from a Chinese medicine standpoint, again, number one, the seasonal allergies getting worse every spring, headaches and sinus pressure.

PMS and irritability are big ones. All PMS is associated with liver congestion. In Chinese medicine, we have a famous formula called shaan. It means free and easy wanderer powder. I love the poetry, but I really like it for its practical application. This formula very delicately deals with estrogen dominance.

If your liver is not clearing properly and you have this estrogen dominant symptoms and sore, swollen boobs and feeling angry and achy and irritable a week before your period, this formula does it and it works on the liver. [00:18:00] So having your skin flare up in the spring is a big indicator feeling digestive sluggishness.

In general, feeling depressed. The Chinese call a lot of depression, liver chi stagnation, generating heat. We now know that depression is considered to be an inflammatory issue as opposed to a neurotransmitter imbalance, which I think is really important. I could do a whole episode on that. Um, feeling worse with rich and fatty foods.

Can be a problem feeling this pressure or discomfort in your right upper quadrant. So just kind of under the ribs on the right side can be an indicator that your liver and or your gallbladder is stressed. And being highly reactive is another one kind of red, angry eyes. The liver opens into the eyes.

Having issues with your tendons is another one and severe. [00:19:00] Allergies are a signal that your liver is congested and overburdened. So take that as an early warning sign that you might have other problems down the line and get it handled.

So if you want some practical tips for what you can do right now, if you have seasonal allergies, you can rinse your nasal passages regularly with something like a Neti pot. Saline rinses are really good to help keep the airways clear, make sure little pollen doesn't get lodged up in there, and it is really activating your immune response.

You can use air recirculation in your car when you're driving around. Steam inhalation can be helpful. We have awesome sort of drops that you can put into your nasal mucosa from a Chinese medicine standpoint that can help bring down an inflammation. There's homeopathics that work with it [00:20:00] and there are very good Chinese medicine herbal formulas.

One called Song Za Song, which. Is very helpful for dealing with the acute symptoms. And we prescribe usually a customized version of that for the acute manifestation 'cause it really helps bring those symptoms under control, ideally, until we can start working on the other issues that are at play. So there are other patterns that play into this.

If you have what we call lung chi deficiency. We need to give you a formula that works on and bolsters and strengthens what we call your lung chi. You can have way chi deficiency, which is this idea of our defensive energy. It's an aspect of our immune system, and there's formulas that you can help to tify and bolster that We don't necessarily recommend that when you have acute symptoms.

We recommend this in the months leading up to the allergies to make sure that you're as [00:21:00] strong and resilient as possible before these triggers kind of land on you. And in more rare cases, the kidneys can be involved. So this is often like an adrenal depletion picture where you're pretty exhausted and you can't mount an adequate response.

So all of these different patterns show up with slightly different, symptomology. So that's why you need to work with a practitioner who can differentiate between the different forms. But some of the most practical things that you can do on your own is to do a good solid liver cleanup. And that means lots of greens, lots of fruits and veggies, adequate hydration, bit of lemon, and seriously, for about nine days, no fat, no protein, nothing that has to.

M make your liver work too hard. You're taking the pressure off the liver, you're flooding your body with phytonutrients and you're not [00:22:00] feeding pathogenic load.

But Dr. Kelly. No protein. I'm gonna die nine old days without a steak. Oh my god. Now, what am I gonna do?

You're gonna live, I haven't lost one yet. In fact, most people feel a mile better and I'm not out here trying to make the whole world vegan. I think it would be a key to our salvation, but I digress. I am very clear that it takes the liver time to unpack what has burdened it. It requires nutritional support.

I am not a huge proponent of doing very aggressive fasts for a long time. I think it stresses the body, depending on how resilient you are, how much your body's had to deal with. It might be very inappropriate and potentially harmful. Your liver wants to store glycogen. Our bodies are glycogen burning machines.

It wants to have an adequate [00:23:00] nutrition profile and just not eating, I don't think is, is the way to go. And I understand the physiology. I've read what there is to read about water fasting, et cetera. I understand its merits, but I'm, I'm not a proponent of that or juice cleanses. There's an excellent book called Liver Rescue.

It was written by a man by the name of Anthony William. It's brilliant. And when I picked it up off the shelf, I thought, oh, look at that. Somebody got it. It is very much in alignment with what I've come to know to be true from a Chinese medicine standpoint. I think it's brilliant and I think in this day and age.

We owe ourselves nine days out of a year of 365 days to give ourselves a leg up and support our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

[00:24:00] Okay. I am gonna sum it up really quick. To support the liver in the spring. Your liver likes green foods. It likes bitter greens. It likes a little bit of sour. It likes lightness and movement and flow. A little bit of, traditionally, Tai chi, Qigong, yoga, things that create lightness and movement in your physical body can be important, and it really does not want too much fat.

Protein, animal products, alcohol, stress, chemicals. There's an argument to be made that everything is a chemical, but you know what I'm talking about. Try not to overburden yourself. Just give yourself a nine day break and see how much better you feel on the other side. What I find wild about, even about day three out of nine days.

Cravings can kick up. My gosh do I [00:25:00] love salty, buttery popcorn. And by about day three, I really, really want some. And you can go through a whole. Mental emotional journey. You can have feelings get lit up from previous traumas as your body starts to unpack some of this stuff. And there was a fascinating book written years ago by a brilliant woman by the name of Candace Pert, who wrote a book called The Molecules of Emotion, and she proved that.

There were molecules and receptor sites for things we traditionally associate with just the brain and our neurotransmitters and feelings throughout the body. And when I used to do more body work and acupuncture on people, I would watch people have these tomato emotional releases as we worked on different organ systems.

So that part, I think, can be worthwhile just on its own. You feel lighter and brighter and more energized and. [00:26:00] You've done yourself a world of good in terms of your overall wellbeing, and this is, I just keep emphasizing this. When you are doing real holistic medicine, you're not suppressing a symptom.

You're not just telling it to shut up and go away. You are actively working at the root and it is having a positive systemic impact on the rest of your body, mind, body, spirit. It's a brilliant thing to do. So give yourself nine days.

If you have mild allergies. You can probably get a handle on it by cleaning up your liver on your own. A nine day deal might be enough, it might not. You might want to do a couple back to back if you need support. Working with a qualified practitioner that has a lot of experience with these conditions can be very valuable.

You get the right treatment at the right time. We're either working on your symptoms and the root, or a combination of both, or just the root, [00:27:00] depending on what's most appropriate for you. At the end of the day. This isn't just something you have to live with, I highly recommend you don't just dismiss it and ignore it and you know, you do. You, if you wanna take some antihistamines every spring and you're otherwise fine, and that's the end of it, fine. I am aware of my bias. I see a certain population of people that really struggle with these things and.

Chinese medicine has some brilliant solutions, and the man that taught me how to do this gets invited now to these big immunology conferences every year where there's a discussion being had and an awareness of the limitations of either, you know, steroids, steroid nasal sprays, antihistamines. You know, the possible complications with [00:28:00] these and the fact that they are limited in what they're able to produce in terms of result and the brilliance and power and nuance of Chinese medicine and what's available here.

And there's really good research being done on allergic conditions out of, uh, university in New York and. In my humble estimate, this is the best medicine in the world to treat these conditions. There's also some quite good homeopathics that can help work on the root and the branch, and I often use these things in combination.

So at the end of the day, if you got allergies, get 'em handled, and Chinese medicine should be first line of defense.

Seasonal allergies are not just this random symptom that you get and you have to deal with, and that's just the way it is. It's a sign of an underlying issue. Your liver is [00:29:00] often at the root of it. When the liver clears up, your histamine is gonna settle down. Your immune system reactions are gonna calm, and often your skin improves.

Your visual acuity can improve. You're certainly gonna have fewer symptoms affecting your eyes, like an allergic rhinitis, like itchy, watery eyes. And my favorite side effects are more glowy skin and better energy and improved mood. 'cause who doesn't want that? Thank you everyone for listening. I appreciate you and please help me spread the word. If you or people that you know are suffering with this, I'm keen to get this information out in the world.

Thanks for listening to Chinese Medicine in the Modern World with me, Dr. Kelly Smick. To learn more or explore working together, visit my website@drsmick.com and follow me on Instagram at Dr. Kelly Smick. Be well and I'll see you in the next [00:30:00] episode.