You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson.
For more, visit themodelhealthshow .com.
Today we have a board -certified allergist to help us understand why are allergies everywhere?
The types of allergies, the prevalence, what is going on that's causing so many different different symptoms, so many people to have allergies, and also the severity.
Today, we're going to uncover what allergies actually are, and I think that it's going to blow your mind.
And I'm telling you, once we start to dive into the different environments where we can find some really creepy things going on that affect our bodies, number one, you need to know.
Number two, it might trip you out a little bit.
But number three, and most importantly, it's going going to help us to be empowered and to make smarter decisions.
So we're going to be going inside of the average restaurant and what you're ordering.
We're going to be talking about what's going on in your bedroom.
We're going to be talking about what's going on when you travel in hotel bedrooms. All right, this and so much more on this amazing episode.
Now, before we get to our special guest, our world is toxic enough.
Your coffee shouldn't be.
Being that coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world, it's also one of the most pesticide -laden crops in the world.
There are a variety of pesticides used in growing coffee.
And just to take one of them, just to look at one of them, you'll find a documented obesogen.
That's right, an obesity -causing agent coming along with the average cup of coffee, chlorpyrifos is one of the most widely used pesticides.
In a recent study cited in the peer -reviewed journal Nature Communication stated, quote, chlorpyrifos suppresses diet -induced thermogenesis and the activation of brown adipose tissue, suggesting its use may contribute to the obesity epidemic, unquote.
Another recent and study published in the journal chemosphere uncovered that the exposure to chlorpyrifos can promote obesity and insulin resistance through influencing the gut and the gut microbiome now again this is just one of the hundreds or even thousands of different pesticides derived from hundreds of different synthetic chemicals that are registered for use by the epa that are largely used on commodity crops like coffee.
It is insane at this point.
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The coffee that I have most often that I've been utilizing for years is absolutely certified organic.
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and actually just today my oldest son Jordan he's been doing like some instant coffee you know like something as import whatever and he goes to like a little coffee shop occasionally you know he's really about that life when it comes to training so he has a little little coffee ritual in the morning today was the first day that he did what he saw his papa doing all right taking the coffee grounds and doing the the drip coffee and he used a four sigmatic thing blend and I saw him today Day he's like hey I did the I did the drip today I was like how was it he was like it was glorious all right our
souls connected I knew what he meant and it's just like upgrading things tremendously again head over to four sigmatic .com forward slash model it's always nice to share four sigmatic with a friend or family member I make coffee for my wife pretty much every day as well again up to 30 % off incredible money back guarantee they got some other cool bonuses there as well to check out but again head over to four sigmatic .com for slash model that's f -o -u -r -s -i -g -m -a -t -i -c dot com for slash model now let's get to a special youtube comment of the week another youtube review by urban fit lab by azir 3253 man man man you
are the guy i was looking for now my target is to to finish all your podcasts.
Keep posting, mate, much love from Bahrain.
That is phenomenal.
Thank you so much for sharing your voice over on YouTube.
And that's the power of this technology.
We can connect from all over the world, our world family.
And wow, that just does my spirit good.
Thank you so much for sharing your voice over on YouTube.
If you have to do so, pop over to Apple podcasts or to the YouTube channel or Spotify.
You can leave comments for the episodes as well.
Share your voice. It really does mean a lot.
And without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.
Dr. Tanya Elliott is a double board certified internal medicine physician and allergist. With nearly two decades of experience in medicine, she's dedicated to delivering personalized care and understanding each patient's unique needs.
needs. Today, she has one of the fastest growing social media accounts with hundreds of millions of views where she simplifies complex medical topics into clear, actionable advice.
And her goal is to help people to get to the root cause of their symptoms and empower people to make informed decisions for better health.
Let's dive into this conversation with the amazing Dr. Tanya Elliott.
All right, Dr. Tanya Elliott, thank you for coming to hang out with us.
Thanks for having me.
I've got so many questions for you, and I know that you're traveling right now.
You're on the road.
Traveled here from New York this morning.
That's right. This morning.
Missed my first flight by four minutes, but got on the next one.
I'm bright -eyed and bushy -tailed, so yeah.
The only time I've ever missed a flight of the, I guess, maybe 100 or 200 whatever flights was in New York.
Well, I don't understand.
I have TSA pre -check.
I have like this whole system, and the line was crazy.
I'm like, it's a random Friday.
Like, where are all you people going?
And so it just messed four minutes.
I missed it by four minutes.
Yeah, the person at the desk to check in, they were like, you're going to miss it.
They're not very positive about, you know.
If you hurry up, then, you know, it's going to be okay.
Stop talking and get me through here.
Stop telling me I'm going to miss it.
That's 30 seconds I just lost, so.
Well, listen, we've got a ton of stuff to talk about.
And I want to start off with your superhero origin story.
All right. I want to know how you got interested in health and wellness in the first place.
And what made you eventually focus on allergies as one of your specialties?
Okay. So when I was younger, it was really my family that was, they're not from this country.
And they were like, oh, we've got a smart one in the family.
She's going to be a doctor.
And I'm like, all right, that's it.
I have my doctor's kit.
I was four years old, my little plastic doctor's kit.
And I was walking around.
I was going to be a doctor.
I was on that path and I really liked the sciences and math and it's, it was interesting when I grew up in the eighties, um, it was like, are you a science person or are you like a English person?
You kind of like how to pick that path.
You couldn't kind of be both actually am more creative than I thought I was.
Um, but anyway, so I was kind of on the path to like become a doctor and it was really so that I could help my family and my grandmother is 103 years old.
So it was really like, you know, English was not my mother's first language.
How can I help them navigate so that my family could be healthy?
That was really like the driving force for me becoming a doctor.
That's awesome. Yeah.
And of course, you know, going to school, doing all the things, what drove you or inspired you to focus on?
You have double board certified internal medicine.
But as an olergist, what prompted that?
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting.
I didn't, first of all, when I signed up to be a doctor, I didn't realize it was like four years of college, then four years of medical school, then three years of residency, then two years of fellowship.
I'm like, wait a second.
I'm 30 years old. I haven't even seen my first patient.
Like what's going on?
I had no idea. I was the first one in my family to go to college, you know?
So there was a lot to learn.
I started off doing basic science research, like in the laboratory with my little coat on and stuff, like working with bacteria and microscopes and all that sort of stuff and I really liked molecular biology and I was a biology major in college and then I started doing more molecular biology research even throughout medical school and so allergy is not just allergy it's allergy and immunology and so immunology is how the immune system works you get to learn about all these pathways and your cytokines and cells and things like that so I really liked that like basic science component component to
immunology. So that was one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is like, you can see some really weird stuff with allergies, right?
And it's like, people are like, I need to get to the bottom of this.
And I felt like I could be a detective with them.
And so you really had to listen and you really had to work with them to be like, okay, what did you eat in the last 24 hours?
Where were you? Who were you with?
Like, what were your environmental conditions?
You know, for lots of other medical diagnoses and medical specialties, you don't really like have to think that hard, right?
You're a GI doctor.
It's like, Oh, let's do a colonoscopy, you know, but for allergy, you really have to do detective work.
And so that's what I became really passionate about.
It's like, let's work together to try to figure out what your body's reacting to and what's going on.
So it's a very fun specialty.
Yeah. And taking that approach of being a detective is like that quality in medicine is so valuable regardless of the specialty, but the fact that you already already had that mindset kind of speaks to where you are today and how you're impacting so many people.
And so with that said, I love that you mentioned the connection because they can't really be separated with allergies and the immune system, right?
So much of what we see manifesting as an allergic response, our immune system is regulating all of this stuff.
Exactly. And so, but we tend to like compartmentalize this mentally.
And so thank you for bringing that up because because we're gonna dive deep into this.
I wanna ask you about something that is it's at epidemic proportions today.
And I know that you're seeing this firsthand.
There's an explosion of allergies.
Like what is going on?
Why are so many more people, number one, the prevalence is higher and also the array of things that people are allergic to their symptoms. Can you talk about the current state of affairs and what's behind all of this?
Yeah, and I'll say one other thing for like the reason behind why I became an allergist. It really is like the root cause medicine, right?
It's like why people go into functional medicine or integrative medicine.
People want to get to the root cause.
Your immune system is everywhere, right?
Like your largest immune organ is your skin.
Your immune system is in your gut.
So you have to like be thinking about the person holistically when you're making a diagnosis.
diagnosis so when we talk about allergies what is an allergy it's the body's abnormal response to something that's normally occurring in the environment and we've seen a rise in allergies we've also seen a rise in autoimmune issues so what's autoimmune it's when your immune system starts to react abnormally to things that are normally occurring in your body so it is this aberrant or abnormal immune reaction and so like what could be causing that what's the root cause of that.
A lot of it has to do with our gut and our gut microbiome because we're essentially made up of a bunch of bacteria.
And so when that is skewed and that is off, we get immune dysregulation.
And so we see an increase in autoimmunity, we see an increase in inflammation, and we see an increase in allergy.
There are a couple of other things specific to allergic diseases and why we're seeing an increase in allergic diseases one increased use of antibiotics so like you know everyone's taking a z -pack that's an antibiotic so it kills off the bacterial infection it also kills off the good bacteria in your gut right that's why we say don't take antibiotics unnecessarily because it skews your immune system and in fact babies that are put on antibiotic in their first year of life are more likely to develop allergies the second piece as it relates to our microbiome is when babies are born through c -section they
miss the very first exposure to the good bacteria in the vaginal canal and so now it's like you're bypassing that and so babies are born and those babies born by c -section are more likely to develop allergies the other thing that we see is this like hyper hygienic world and like part of it is if you follow me on social media you may become a little bit of a germaphobe.
And I apologize for that because the truth is, we actually want to introduce bacteria and foreign bodies to a baby early on.
And so babies who actually grow up on a farm, or if they grow up and they have multiple siblings, they tend to have less allergies because they're getting exposed to more stuff.
Your immune system needs to be exposed to things, both good bacteria, bad bacteria, early on in order for it to develop develop properly.
We also see that people who have pets in their first year of life, exposed to pets in their first year of life, have fewer allergies.
So it's like, let the kids roll around in the dirt a little bit.
So like in the 90s and early 2000s, when we were like, oh my gosh, hand sanitizer everywhere, sanitize everything, put your baby in a bubble, that actually made it worse from an allergy perspective.
I'll say one other thing.
I know I'm talking a lot, but your immune system cells that trigger allergies they're called your th2 cells those cells are actually meant to fight off parasites so in developing countries those th2 cells are busy fighting off parasitic infections so you don't see allergies in developing countries in the u .s those th2 cells are sitting there twiddling their thumbs meaning we got nothing to do and so that's when they start to react to normal things that are occurring in the environment it's fascinating you know that's again we don't usually make that connection or even think about especially in the quote
developed world about parasites and what our immune system is doing in response to all this stuff and just to go back and recap a little bit so you talked about our overuse of antibiotics which this is the thing many practitioners are now aware and talking about this and not as ready to hand out antibiotics thankfully but it was decades decades and decades of everybody and their mother and their brother their mother and their child getting antibiotics.
I know I had multiple rounds of antibiotics as a kid.
And sometimes it would be for stuff that was not bacteria related, right?
So it might have a viral infection, but getting prescribed antibiotics, so we overuse them.
And you also mentioned the inoculation, right?
There are more people having C -sections than ever before.
And this isn't always, I'm grateful that we have that sophistication to be able to do that safely.
But at the same time, I'm that's not always a case of why a C -section is being done, you know, they're scheduled C -sections, right, just because I want to have my baby on a particular day, or, you know, whether it might even be the physician and their their schedule, like we've got to just, you know, it's getting late in the day, right?
There's a ton of different reasons for that.
And I see you shaking your head, can you talk a little bit more about that?
A hundred percent. And so working moms, people of higher socioeconomic status, the data shows that they are more likely to have a C -section.
and guess what their children are more likely to have allergies so it really is a thing so c -sections are great when they're medically necessary right not they shouldn't be scheduled they should not be scheduled because you're bypassing that first exposure to bacteria through the vaginal canal that is the baby's first opportunity to learn what good bacteria is what it looks like and there's some research to say that if you are born through c -section you should actually be slathered with some fluids and what have you and that type of bacteria to formulate the right type of microbiome so that your
immune system forms the right way and as I mentioned before having antibiotics in the first year of life again that kills off the good bacteria in your gut it messes up your microbiome you're more likely to develop allergies and then also pregnant moms if they're taking antibiotics that also can impact the baby and have them develop out of allergies.
Wow. And then the final one that you mentioned was the kind of hyper cleanliness paradigm, which we just swung the pendulum so much. So like everything should be sterile.
And the reality is we need these inputs.
It's like training for our immune system.
Right. And you mentioned all those normal exposures that we would get that now we're further and further away from those things.
You know, kids are not going outside as much, you know, we're on our devices and, you know, our families are so fractured, you know, people aren't spending as much time around other they're humans.
Because right now here in this room with my team and you, we're all sharing, file sharing micro microbiome data, microbial data is getting shared, you know, and we need each other.
There's this loneliness epidemic, you know, we're more isolated.
And so now it's starting to make sense why allergies are going up, but we don't think about these things.
In addition to that, what are some other things going on in our environment that could be leading to more issues with allergies?
Because a lot of people, and I want to ask you about this, a lot of people have food -related allergies.
Does this have anything to do with what we might be eating?
Yes, and as it relates to food allergies, there was a decision made in the 1990s that we shouldn't introduce peanut to children until after the age of two.
At the time, what we knew about our immune systems were like, let's avoid things that may cause allergies, or let's avoid things that would make allergies more prevalent.
So there was a decision made, and also because peanuts it's going to be a choking hazard, don't introduce peanut until children are over the age of two.
What happened? We took something that's normally occurring in the environment that you're normally exposed to, we removed it and then introduced it after the immune system was already formed, right?
And so the body's like, wait a second, that's something foreign.
I've never seen that before, that peanut protein before.
And all of a sudden we've got 10X, 20X increase in peanut allergy in the United States.
If you look at places like Israel, where there's something called Bomba, which is like a peanut -based product that's used in teething rings, the incidence of peanut allergy is 0 .2 % because they're introduced to it early on.
Here, it's almost 10%.
Another reason for this is because peanut was present, right?
Big brothers and sisters were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, right?
So peanut was around in the environment, babies weren't exposed to it through their GI tract.
This is the most tolerant immune organ, our GI tract.
They were introduced through the skin.
And when you're introduced to something through the skin, the body's like, oh no, that's that weird thing that got into contact with my skin.
So then when you eat it, your body's like, oh no, I'm going to develop an allergic reaction to it, an immune response to it.
And so the other thing I caution people against is don't put food products on your baby's skin oatmeal baths wheat based baths almond based all of those types of things don't put food products on baby skin they need to be exposed through through the GI tract first and say okay this is something that I'm supposed to be eating that I can tolerate when you introduce her you have exposure through your skin first the body is like oh no again that's just something that I was exposed to on my skin this must be something foreign Yeah.
Now, what about, is there anything, you mentioned the microbiome being really at the heart of this when it comes to our immune system and allergies and just kind of intelligent force.
What if we're putting certain foods into our gut that could that be disruptive and leading to more allergies?
So what I'm specifically asking about is like, we have this epidemic of ultra processed foods, right?
Can that be one of the the contributing factors?
Ultra processed foods, post food harvesting, all of the manipulations and changes that we're making to our food.
There's not hard evidence to say, yes, this triggers allergies, but like, let's use common sense.
How could it not? And what we do have to go on is something that we know about shellfish allergy in adults.
So shellfish allergy is more common in people over the age of 30.
And the thinking behind this is that people who take antacids or drink alcohol, their pH in their stomach gets messed up.
And then when they eat the shellfish, the way that that shellfish is broken down, all of a sudden the proteins start looking different.
And when the proteins start looking different, so drawing the parallels to ultra processed foods or post -food harvesting, when the foods start looking different than their natural form, that's when the body's like, oh, I don't recognize this.
this is something foreign and then boom you develop an allergic reaction to it so what is a histamine reaction so histamine is a chemical that gets released by your allergy cells which is responsible for itching swelling redness and congestion so we've got like two main types of immune system cells th1 cells that fight off of viruses and bacteria and then th2 cells that are are meant to fight off parasites but in the developed world where we don't have parasites they're the ones that cause allergies.
Those th2 cells release histamine in order to try to fight and calm down the infection when quite frankly it's the opposite and it results in this immune reaction itching redness swelling congestion.
So there's an array obviously of allergic reactions that the body can have. Is the skin like the primary way that our body would express an allergy?
Yeah, and the way an allergy works is you actually develop antibodies to these things that are normally occurring in the environment.
So you, let's say you ingest this thing.
Now you have an antibody.
That antibody binds to that TH2 cell and boom, histamine and a whole bunch of other cytokines and things get released and you get the itching, swelling, redness, congestion.
90 % of the time you're gonna have skin symptoms and it occurs within minutes to a few hours of ingestion or exposure to what you're allergic to.
It's fascinating. Our skin is telling us some information.
So much, so much. Wow, wow, wow.
We've got to put some respect on our skin.
So with this being said, of course, we dabbled in a couple of things.
Basically, the environment has changed dramatically and it's happened in just a few short decades.
Is there anything else that jumps out to you or that you've seen in your practice, in your research?
that's contributing to the epidemics of allergies well as it relates to environmental allergies global warming and we've got above average temperatures we've got above average rainfall shorter winters that means way more pollen and so you've got all this pollen in the air so what's happening is that people who don't even normally have allergies are reacting to the sheer amount of pollen in the air so when adults like it's very rare to get an allergy over the age of 50 to something in the environment but when older adults are like oh I'm reacting all of a sudden I'm sneezing it's because it's sheer
amount of pollen in the air the other issue is that pollen can bind to pollutants in the air like diesel exhaust and sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide and now you've got super pollen and it's going to be incredibly irritating to anyone who breathes this in so they might not have those allergy antibodies circulating in their blood but but they're going to have a local allergic reaction because it's nasty what they're breathing in.
And so automatically your respiratory tract is going to try to sneeze that out and get rid of it because it's toxic to them.
That's what I was going to ask you about specifically was pollutants.
Yep. You know, there's the EPA is regulating, I think it's like 80 ,000 different newly invented chemicals and like there's like thousands more each year and there's a bunch that are unregulated as well it's not just outdoor pollutants too it's indoor pollutants we spend 90 of our lives indoors which is crazy like people please let's get outside open up your windows even if you have allergies open up your windows there's something called an indoor microbiome we talk about our gut microbiome we talk about our skin microbiome that i wish there was some kind of black light or something that could show
all the bacteria toxins volatile organic compounds that that are circulating in our indoor air.
And that's off gassing from furniture, like if you have like wood composite furniture, the crap you buy from Ikea, all this sort of stuff off gassing directly into your air, none of this stuff is regulated.
In California, at least they will state on the tag like this may be a toxic substance, make sure you keep your furniture outside for a couple of days before you bring it inside.
Like literally, and who's reading that?
think about mattresses that are treated with chemical flame retardants you buy a mattress you're sleeping on something that is treated with chemical flame retardants that stuff off gases into the air you're breathing that in overnight we're not thinking about this stuff because we can't see it yet we've got allergies asthma respiratory issues migraines eye issues it's all related holy moly indoor microbiome indoor you heard here first you heard here first i love this i love this got a quick break coming up we'll be right back in this episode you heard dr tanya elliott talk about the hidden harms
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Obviously, again, all bacteria, bacteria you know you mentioned the importance of having a healthy microbiome but with any microbiome there's going to be good guys there's going to be some not so good guys and we don't want the not so good guys to take over the system of course but there's going to be some exposures we don't want to be hyper cleanliness right we don't want to go too far where we're just trying to uh antibacterial everything but there are certain things that can harm us and a lot of of people don't think about them and I want to talk about going out to a restaurant.
All right. What are three things that you would never order when you go out to a restaurant?
Okay. So one is never get like a lemon wedge or something in your drink.
If you think about it, the outside of a lemon, right?
People, the people in the back, the cooks and stuff, they're not washing the outside of the lemon skin, right?
It falls on the floor, pick it up, put it on there, chop up the lemon, use it as a wedge on the side of your drink right so you're not thinking about that it's fine if you want to like squeeze some lemon into your drink but don't let that outside of the lemon skin or orange or you know any kind of fruit with a thick skin get inside your beverage so that's one thing the second thing is condiments wait before you go to the second thing we'll put up a little image as well um and i'm gonna can you talk about the bacteria that can be yeah on it okay so there can be all kinds of bacteria on that i'm
talking like fecal matter type of stuff right so e coli and nasty things that you would never want in your drink because again nobody's thinking about washing the outsides of uh fruit that's got thick skin and that goes for pineapple you get the pina colada with a little pineapple wedge, right?
No one is washing the outside of those fruits.
So that's one thing to consider.
And on your social media, you actually shared, by the way, everybody's got to follow you.
What's your Instagram handle?
Dr. Tanya Elliott. It's so good.
So good. Our guest who was in right before you came in, she follows you and she was like, your video that you just posted about traveling, which we'll talk about, so inspiring.
And I love how you make everything so concise.
But you shared, there was a really crazy study and we'll put it up for everybody just showing all the different bacteria that's on a common lemon wedge that people might put into their drinks.
And so you're like, you're showing this stuff.
And this is stuff you never think about.
Like you want to be a little healthy, add a little zest to the water, the lemon, little lime, but we don't think about what can be coming along with that little, little stowaways.
Right. Those little stowaways are the bad bacteria that you do not want to be ingesting.
The other is condiments.
So like those individual condiments that are sitting in the the table.
I'm sorry, but you don't know what was put in there or what the last person was doing.
Maybe they stuck their finger inside the ketchup to try to get it out.
They're banging it against the table.
It's getting refilled with God knows what.
So if you're at the bottom of the barrel there, that stuff's probably been there for ages.
So I don't use any condiments that have been sitting on the table.
The third is truffle oil.
And this is something that actually disappointed disappointed me because like when truffle fries came out I was like oh the truffle fries I felt so fancy I was paying a couple extra bucks for them I didn't realize that this is a synthetic made product so we're like we think about like synthetic fragrances right and how that results in hormone disruption cardiovascular issues right so we're like clean beauty you know don't use synthetic fragrances all this sort of stuff but we're okay with synthetic products in our food so like there's nothing real about that truffle oil flavoring it's actually
made from formaldehyde that's the stuff we use in embalming fluid you know like when someone passes this is like what but it has this aroma and this smell the other thing like anything that says natural flavors we have no idea like what that where that stuff's coming from but anyway as it relates to to truffle oil, completely synthetic, absolutely not.
Real truffles, they don't actually maintain or keep that aroma.
They smell nothing like it.
And they couldn't maintain that aroma because of their structure in oil.
So that's something you steer clear of.
This is awesome. Again, for so many of us, what you've done is like you've been really great at highlighting things that we take for granted.
We see these things are just kind of like in the background of our lives.
And another one of those areas for us to consider, you already kind of opened the door on this, is our bedroom, right?
You mentioned a little bit about the mattresses, the synthetic ingredients themselves that make the mattresses, by the way, but also the flame retardants, off -gassing and all this stuff.
This is supposed to be our place of recovery and our safe space.
But the modern bedroom is anything but.
What are some things that you personally would not bring into your bedroom or use in your bedroom, especially when it's relating to sleep?
A lot of people, for example, are sleeping with their phones.
Let's talk about some things that we should probably avoid if we want to get good sleep at night.
Yeah. And I'll tell you the backstory, like how I ended up doing all this stuff is because as an allergist, we're always talking about avoidance of our environmental triggers.
So I started doing this stuff for people who had dust mite or indoor mold allergy or other types of indoor allergies.
And then I realized like, wait a minute, there are pieces of this that are applicable to everyone because we're talking about toxins as well.
well. We're not just talking about things that people are allergic to.
We're literally talking about things that are either toxic or dangerous.
And so that's how I sort of expanded into beyond just allergic conditions into like, these are things that you shouldn't be exposed to.
I'd like to start talking about like, if you do have indoor allergies and the things to avoid.
Number one is you don't want to have any carpets.
So I don't have any carpets in my bedroom.
You also don't want to have any curtains or drapes.
And the reason is that dust mites can can live in your carpeting, they can live in curtains and drapes, and then you're breathing that in as you sleep.
You also want to have protective covers for your mattress, pillow, and box spring, and ideally all natural fibers wherever you can.
You don't want to have something that's synthetic fiber, right, that's like made of memory foam, for example, which is like has polyurethane in it, right, and then you're sleeping on something that has polyurethane.
That's the the same stuff that we use in paint varnish like why would you want that to be in your mattress so those are some things as it relates to your phone people will sleep with their phone underneath their pillow especially if they have to like wake up early in the morning they want to hear their alarm clock right you're not supposed to do that your phone can combust and literally go on fire and somebody in Asia actually died because they had their phone underneath it wasn't breathable and the phone combusted the other reason why you don't want want to sleep with your phone anywhere near
you is everyone wakes up in the middle of the night what's the first thing you do you roll over you check your phone right automatically you're having this exposure to blue light that's going to keep you awake and then people are like oh i can't fall back asleep well it's probably because you're reaching for your phone that blue light is then stimulating your awake hormones and you can't fall back asleep no surprise you mentioned earlier about the benefits of having pets in our household but what about pets in your bed don't put pets on on your bed.
Just think about it.
Those pets, right? Unless you're giving them baths and showers every single day and you're wiping down their paws every single time they come inside, they're full of fecal matter.
They're full of other types of bacteria and viruses that are unhealthy for us.
So their saliva, it might be bacteria that's okay for a pet.
It's not good bacteria for you to be exposed to.
Think about their bums. Unless you're wiping their butts with toilet paper like they're sitting on your pillow you've got all their fecal matter now sitting on your pillow so we don't want to have pets on the bed especially like now as we're getting into the warmer months there could be ticks there could be fleas all kinds of stuff things on their dander like no thanks don't keep your pets on the bed get them a nice little bed for themselves oh this is some people got to feel some type of way about this and this is the thing like with the work that you're doing you're just sharing what you know
as a practitioner and you know some of this stuff is a little controversial because again we just do certain things we don't think about the bigger picture you know and that's some real stuff right there but i'm not saying do everything like you know my page is really like here's the array of things and my job is to make you aware right you pick and choose the stuff that makes sense for you and your life and doesn't right it's all about trade -offs right however you can't make those decisions if you're unaware right if you didn't know about the truffle oil thing right then you would be like oh
no this is something good or healthy for me to eat or you know this is a luxury for me versus a synthetic ingredient made out of formaldehyde so like my job is to make you aware of all the things that could potentially harm your health and then you pick and choose the stuff that works for your life and your lifestyle and the stuff that doesn't i don't adhere to all my advice like people people probably think I'm a crazy person.
It's like, you know, how does she live her life?
But I don't adhere to everything.
I adhere to lots of stuff, but not everything.
Yeah, I'm human. Yeah, yes.
So since we're in the bedroom, what about when you travel?
Right? So right now, you're probably staying at a hotel.
Is there anything that we should know as far as like our hotel bedroom?
Never sleep on a hotel pillowcase.
And for me in particular, I have sensitive skin and they use commercial grade detergent and you it's like nasty that stuff is so rough those sheets and stuff are rough and then they use commercial grade detergent every time I used to go to a hotel I would get a rash all on my face so I bring my own pillowcase when I travel the other thing to consider is that they may change the sheets after each guest comes but they're not changing the bedspread right and they're not changing like you know little throw blankets and throw pillows those things are sitting there a lot of hotels also have dark colored
carpets for a reason because it covers up stains so like you want to be really careful with carpets I try to look for hotels that have hardwood floors I'm also very cautious about using things like the hot water pot right have you seen that like those instant kettles there have been stories of people like putting their underwear in there to try to like wash their underwear and stuff like that.
I'm not kidding. These are like real stories.
Um, also any of the hotel toiletries, right?
You don't know what those hotel toiletries may have been filled with by other guests.
It's not like the, uh, cleaning staff is coming in and looking and making sure that the product is what it says it is.
So you just really want to be careful about that.
Can you share that example of one thing that happened with your patient?
This is the worst story.
This happened to me when I was in residency.
I had a patient come in and literally literally half of their hair was gone.
And it was a patient that I've been seeing as a primary care doctor and she was in tears.
And she said, she went to a hotel and she washed her hair with the shampoo and there must've been nair in there.
And when she went to wipe, you know, wash her hair, wash her hair off, off came her hair.
And it was like this horrible story.
And it's like, first of all, the worst thing ever that someone would do, but like, yeah, that's not regulated.
And people also put bodily fluids in there.
holy moly all right let's bring your own toiletries and your own pillowcase and your own pillowcase now let's let's lighten the mood now let's lift up the mood because we're gonna want to travel with her oh my gosh but we need to know like i never thought about this i always see the little pump bottles in the showers and i don't use them i bring my own soap but you know like i'm thinking about you know like my son for example he might use that stuff i never asked and so just to be aware of that is valuable and now what are some things that we can do proactively to support our sleep when we're
in we'll say a hotel bedroom is there anything that you bring along to really help to create a sleep sanctuary I have this little hack where I bring electrical tape with me because I don't know if this happens to you but there's all these little blinking lights from everywhere in the room right so I bring electrical tape and I literally cover up all the light sources like it'll be the alarm clock the annoying telephone the television there's always like some beeping light there or something that's like the smoke alarm or something i don't cover the actual smoke alarm sensor but the light i will cover
um one of my followers actually said oh use a hair clip and actually clip like the curtains like the sides of the curtains because there's always a little bit of light that's seeping through even if they're blackout curtains so i really like that one as well but you want to sleep in pitch black and And the reason why that's so important is because that's what increases your body's natural production of melatonin.
So I'm not a big fan of taking melatonin supplements, but let's do things to increase our body's natural sleep hormone or natural melatonin.
Also, sleeping in pitch black, and a lot of people don't realize this, it also down -regulates your hunger hormones.
So it's like, hey, time to sleep.
Up -regulate melatonin.
Down -regulate hunger hormones.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
And just with that one simple thing, you know, creating, it's a little bit different.
A lot of people experience when they go to a hotel, they actually sleep better because they tend to have blackout curtains.
Right. But, you know, and then at home they've got all this, quote, light pollution coming into their bedroom.
So, you know, be more mindful of that.
And so what about using an eye mask?
mask. Using an eye mask too and I do both because sometimes in the middle of the night I take off my eye mask or it's bothering me so I like to have pitch black as much as possible right.
I want to stack the deck to be in pitch black.
Yeah in my first book I talked about this but there was a interesting study done at Cornell University and they took a test subject and put them into an otherwise dark room and they put a light behind their knee the size of about a quarter and that That was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle.
And because our skin has photoreceptors, you know, all of our, it's not just our eyes, you know, and so with that light coming in, like our body is trying to see like, what time is it?
Because if we think about prior to electricity, you know, this, the invention of light bulb, how would our bodies know, right?
It's not just our eyes.
Like we open our eyes and we see that the sun is rising, like our skin, like our bodies will start to pick this data up and then form the rest of our system, you know?
So just keeping this stuff in mind.
and so you mentioned not being a fan of taking melatonin are there any sleep supportive supplements that you do recommend so sometimes i will use magnesium glycinate or magnesium bisglycinate and then it helps to promote calmness and sleep also a lot of women are deficient in this especially right around their period so they may find like they start to get headaches like the week before their period a trigger for this is that our magnesium magnesium stores are depleted.
And so that often happens to me.
So I will use a magnesium supplement.
I also like tart cherry.
So I'll make myself like a little sleep mocktail, magnesium glycinate, a little bit of tart cherry.
Sometimes I'll add a little bit of kava, which is almost like the body's natural anti -anxiety medicine, so to speak.
So it's way better than popping something like an natavan.
But it has similar properties.
So it's also very relaxing.
So I make myself a sleep mocktail.
And also just avoiding alcohol before bed.
Yeah. Now, what about the air quality in the bedroom?
You mentioned like, again, off gassing furniture, pet dander, dust, all this stuff.
Air quality in the bedroom is incredibly important.
You're staying in one place.
And you're staying in that one place for, let's say, eight to 10 hours.
And we're often not thinking about this, one thing that is important is the humidity level.
And you want to make sure your humidity level in your bedroom is anywhere from 20 to 50 percent.
If it's higher than that, then you're at increased risk of a huge dust mite problem and a huge indoor mold problem.
So you have a sweet spot of humidity.
I tell patients just get a humidity gauge and it comes with like a temperature and humidity gauge is like six dollars on Amazon.
And you want to make sure that the humidity level less than 50 percent.
Oftentimes, especially people have nasal congestion or they are like dry skin or something, they will put a humidifier in the bedroom and they don't understand why they're still feeling congested.
And it's because they're actually making their symptoms worse because the humidity levels are too high and they're probably breathing in volatile organic compounds off gas by mold.
Do you use the air purifier?
Yes. And you want to to make sure that it is the appropriate size for the room.
You also want to make sure you know what you're purifying.
So if you've got allergies, you want to make sure that it has a HEPA filter, an allergen filter.
If you're concerned about the off gases and the toxins, then you want to make sure it's an activated carbon filter, because that's the only thing that's going to draw those toxins out of the air.
If somebody's wanting to, you know, they've been struggling with allergies allergies and it's quote allergy season, are there any things that people can do just besides taking different medications or supplements, things like that?
Well, actually supplements might be okay.
Are there any things that people can do that can help their body to adjust more gracefully as they're going into allergy season?
There are a few things that you can do.
So the first line of treatment for allergies is avoidance of your triggers.
So if you suffer from outdoor outdoor allergies, you want to make sure you're not tracking those outdoor allergens into your home.
So it actually starts with your entryway.
When you come in, you want to take off your shoes and not track any pollen on the bottom of your shoes and fecal matter.
Like it's gross. Don't wear shoes in the house.
But anyway, you want to prevent yourself from like bringing that into your home.
You also want to take off your clothes right away, put them in the washing machine or in a hamper and you want to wash your clothes because pollen is going to come in and be stuck on your your clothes.
You also want to get in the habit of taking a shower as soon as you come inside or at the very least showering in the evenings.
So if you wait to shower in the morning, then all the pollen that then has got stuck in your hair and on your skin is then getting tracked into your bed, into your bedroom.
And then that pollen becomes airborne and suspended in the air.
You can't see it, but the allergy symptoms are like nonstop, not going away.
So that's really important.
The other thing I tell patients is not to wear hairspray in the springtime because because pollen sticks to your hair anyway, but it will stick to your hair even more if you've got product in it.
Or you may want to just wear a hat or a wide -brimmed hat.
The other thing for you ladies out there, fake eyelashes.
Pollen loves to get stuck in between your eyelashes, so if you've got those fake lashes with the adhesive glue, they're going to get stuck in your lashes, and you know you're not supposed to be scrubbing them, right?
Because then the eyelashes will come off.
So then you get pollen stuck in your lashes.
So if you can't help it and you need to have fake lashes, You better buy a pair of like really big sunglasses and wear those when you go outside you might be Putting a halt to the eyelash epidemic out here Alright, cuz it's getting out of some of these eyelashes are like full -on rakes at this point like they're just grabbing up all kinds of pollen well and I will tell you the other thing with eyelashes as it relates to allergies is the type of eyelash glue that is used the chemical it's a chemical people it's it's an acrylate and that is the worst type of allergy to have and I see this all the time
women come in and they're like oh I've got eyelid dermatitis or rash like on my eyelids or this dry patches around my eyes and I can't get it to go away and I'm like it's the eyelash glue it's the eyelash adhesive and they don't want to hear that but that's what it is and so it's the last thing they think of they're like oh it's a personal product it's a cream it's a makeup it's your eyelash glue and the problem with acrylate allergy you can also get it from gel manicures um acrylates are in so many things so they're in nail polish they're in the eyelash glue they're also in dentures they're in if you
ever end up with a prosthetic joint so if you develop an allergy to acrylates you're kind of screwed because they're in so many things and as we age you have exposure to those things and you can have really terrible allergic reactions to them so I caution with the lashes ladies Wow so is there anything related to you know maybe maybe our sleep or exercise or maybe something with our nutrition any supplements are there any other things that people can do to help to kind of down regulate their sensitivity to allergies so a couple things you can do so histamine which we talked about before gets produced
when you're stressed and we see this over and over again especially with skin symptoms when you are stressed out you have an increase of blood flow to your skin a dilation of those blood vessels increased release of histamine and then you end up getting itchy all over also when you're stressed out your eyes can tear your nose can get congested so it's important to regulate your stress levels it does impact your allergy symptoms the The other thing as it relates to histamine are external sources of histamine.
And so there are certain foods that are high in histamine content.
So like for example, when you eat pineapple, sometimes your mouth gets itchy.
And some people are more sensitive to that than others because certain foods are high in histamine content.
Pineapple, red wine, aged cheeses.
People are looking like, oh my gosh, I can't eat anything now.
But you want to consider being on a low histamine diet because your body's already producing a lot of internal histamine, you don't need external histamine sources as well.
Awesome. This is so good.
So good. Listen, I can ask you a hundred more questions and I know that you're here for a short time and I just appreciate this.
This is so insightful.
Can you share where people can follow you, get more information, just get more into your universe?
So you can follow me at Dr. Tanya Elliott.
I also have a Healthy Home eBook, which walks you through room by room, a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about it's like how to be aware of the things that could be harming your health and you don't realize it and then how to make smart decisions and healthy decisions about your home but it's also in an aesthetic way so I give recommendations for different types of products and things that you may want to have in your home none of it's paid and then also I link to clinical studies if you want to like geek out on the science of like okay how much fecal matter am I tracking into my house
when I wear my shoes in the house there are clinical studies that are attached to that so you may want to check out my healthy home ebook and then i'm launching substack soon so that's going to be like my community my people where you guys will be able to come on and we'll be able to talk about stuff chat and then my audience can tell me like what they want to learn more about right and then we can geek out we can get into it we can bring in expert guests i could ask them the hard questions because i'm not afraid to ask hard questions and so it's really it's called real health with dr tanya and it's
really a place for people to get accurate no nonsense health information because i will tell you like when you go to see your doctor they're like you know well we don't say always we don't say never we'll leave it up to you for clinical decision making and it's like stop what would you tell your brother or sister what would you tell your friend at a cocktail party right like that's what medicine it needs to be we need to be much more real we can't just be like three steps removed and just leave it all the onus on the patient to do their own research like give them a point of view so anyway that's
like what this is all about it's real health that's awesome and you know specifically with helping people to navigate their home and you are a pioneer truly in telehealth so you were like literally doing walkthroughs in people's homes virtually and being able for them to create a a safer space for themselves and for their families and seeing incredible results with that and so taking all of that knowledge and putting it into an ebook is uber valuable so people can find that on your instagram on my website which is just tanya elliott md .com perfect awesome last question what is the model that you're
here to create for everyone else for you for your community with the way that you live your life personally that's a really good question what is the model for the way I live my life personally.
Number one is just like having an awareness of our actions and how they can impact our health.
Number two is being a realist to say like, okay, this is how things can impact my health, but I'm not doing that and that's okay.
Number three is accepting yourself for who you are and where you are in your journey and not being so hard on yourself because the last thing I want is for people to become neurotic because they're like, like, I should be doing this.
I shouldn't be doing that.
And I will admit, like, I've been a perfectionist in my life.
And like, I get so hard on myself.
And it doesn't serve anybody, right?
So like, accept who you are, and where you are, and then celebrate those wins when you're like, you know what, I did that.
That wasn't so hard. I'm feeling better about it.
I'm going to celebrate those wins.
But I'm not going to be that hard on myself if I haven't achieved or accomplished accomplished or didn't do what Dr. Tanya said.
I love that. I love that.
Well, I appreciate you so much for coming to hang out with us.
It's been awesome. Yeah.
Thanks for having me.
It was too short. I know, right?
We'll do this again.
We'll do this again someday.
I appreciate you so much. The one and only Dr. Tanya Elliott.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today.
I hope that you got a lot of value out of this.
If you did, you already know what to do.
Share this out with somebody that you care about.
And of course, pop over and check out Dr. Tanya Elliott on on Instagram, really, really great videos and content that she's sharing there in very, you know how social media is, bite -sized, consumable way.
So it was really awesome for her.
This is the first big podcast, major podcast that she's ever been on and to share her voice in this longer form, to be able to really dig in deeper on some topics.
And I'm so grateful, again, this is the right use of technology to be able to connect with such experienced, experienced insightful and talented people and to be able to share their message in a broader and new and different dynamic ways we need more voices and lifting people up and highlighting functional wellness and highlighting the very abnormal nature of the environment that we're living in and just to again point us back to yes we got to have awareness i love how she closed things up but we got to have awareness but we've also got to be being empowered and know what are some better choices
for us to make. And we've got to share this information with the people that we care about and pass this information down to our children.
Because again, technology is not slowing down.
I don't even think we've even scratched the surface.
So we've got to really make sure more than ever that we're investing in our humanness and really taking care of ourselves physically and mentally.
We've got got some amazing masterclasses and class guests heading your way very very soon so make sure to stay tuned take care have an amazing day and i'll talk with you soon and for more after the show make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow .com that's where you can find all of the show notes you can find transcriptions videos for each episode and if you got a comment you can leave me a comment there as well and please make sure to head over to itunes and leave us a rating to to let everybody know that the show is awesome.
And I appreciate that so much. And take care.
I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life.
Thanks for tuning in.
