Stuffy Noses, Headaches, and Honey

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this week we're going to talk about congestion, stuffy nose, headaches, and the difference between sugars. So let's take a look at our first question.

Hey, Dr. Mark Hyman. I'm always congested. I've gone through a gut healing protocol. I'm living a very organic and chemical free life. My intestine is great, digestion is great, but I'm always congested. My nose is always stuffy. I do have two Pomeranian dogs, and I think that might be a culprit, but I think that they're allergies, so let me know. Thanks.

So congestion, stuffiness, runny nose, post-nasal drips, sinus problems, they're all signs of inflammation. And the question is, what's causing the inflammation? What's the trigger? As we talk about in functional medicine, we get to the root of the problem. At the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, we see so many patients with these problems and we really work to solve the root cause. And it's not that hard actually. It's not about taking steroid nasal sprays and decongestants and allergy pills and, you know, those can be symptomatically helpful, but they're not dealing with the problems. It's like putting a Band-Aid on something or turning the mopping up the floor while the sink's overflowing. Figure out that the sink's overflowing, turn the sink off, then you have to mop up the floor. So what we look at as the causes of sinus problems are allergies. Now it can be food, so it can be dairy is the biggest one, gluten, other foods depending on the person. And there's ways of testing for that. There's different kinds of allergies. There's the acute, like you eat a strawberry or peanut, your throat swells up, you can't breathe, you die. And then there's the low-grade allergies, which are more called sensitivities. And these aren't things that you're gonna die from, but that can make your life miserable. And they're a different type of part of your immune system that's working on this. And that can be from, you know, all sorts of different foods. It can be from environmental allergens, which are often the first kind. And it could be your dog, like you said. I think that's a big thing to think. It could be mold in your environment. It could be other issues, dust allergies that you're not aware of. So that's really important to dig in and figure that out. But most of the time it's food. and other times it's environmental stuff like cats, dogs, dust, mold, all those things are real. So you kind of got to dig in and there are blood tests so you can figure it out. There's blood tests for the delayed allergies, the mild ones, there's blood tests for the IgE and if you have a dog, I would certainly check that out. But what I do with allergy patients, what we do or people who have chronic sinus issues, we do elimination diet. So something like 10-day detox or Eat Fat, Get Thin really works well. and if you get better, then you know it's something you're eating, right? Or something you're not eating that you were now eating when you go on the new plan. And then there's supplements I use. I use things to help reset the gut. So you might need to treat yeast issues, you might need to treat bad bacteria in there. You can give people certain supplements that can help, like probiotics, quercetin, which is a very powerful herbal medicine that can actually help to reduce the inflammation. And so there's a number of different things we can use to help people's gut heal probiotics, zinc, evening primrose oil, all kinds of things that we can use to help allergies. So it's really pretty straightforward for most people, but you kind of got to dig in a little bit. So that's how I would deal with this chronic congestion and stuffy nose stuff. So the next question is from Melissa, and she has a tweet. She says, I'm battling these horrible headaches for the past three years now, and they never go away. Help, what can I do? Well, headaches are also hugely common, whether it's migraines or headaches that are just tension headaches or reactions to other things. So what I do again is go to the cause. So functional medicine helps us get to the cause. And we treat so many people with headaches at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts and at the Cleveland Clinic, although we got about 2,000 people on the waiting list there. We really have to look at what's causing it. So the first thing I would look at again is foods. Gluten is a big trigger of headaches and so are other foods sensitivities. I look at, if you're a woman, I look at hormonal changes. If you have PMS, people often get premenstrual migraines and that's an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. This is often caused by diet, by lack of exercise, by stress. Dairy is a big factor. So you really have to look at what's going on hormonally. And then also it could be other factors. For example, magnesium deficiency is a huge cause of headaches. So is abnormal gut flora when you have imbalances in the gut flora. So are other nutritional deficiencies. So we really look at hormones, we look at diet, we look at nutritional status and deficiencies, and we look at environmental factors. All these things are really the causes of headaches. And so it could be something you think you're dealing with but you really may not be effectively dealing with and it's easy to fix. So the fact is with a little bit of detective work, with some diagnostic tests, for example, magnesium levels, hormone levels, gluten allergy testing, you can figure out what's the cause for you. And there may be 10 people with headaches and they all have different causes and they all have different treatments. That's the beauty of functional medicine. allows us to get to the root cause of it. So that's really how I would approach headaches and it's very effective and I've written a number of blogs about this, about migraines, about headaches. So I encourage you to check it out, like very detailed lists of what to do, what to think about. So the next question is from Carol and let's listen to what Carol has to say. So Carol, here's the thing. This is a really common question I get, which is if I can't use sugar, can I use blank. Can I use honey? Can I use stevia? Can I use artificial sweeteners? Can I use agave? Can I use whatever? Monk nut, fruit, lotus, whatever. You know, it's like, this is a clear sign about how your body is in a relationship with sugar, which means it's addicted. So if you need sweet to get by, it means you're addicted to sugar. and it doesn't matter what it is. If it's agave, if it's lotus bean fruit, you know, sugar, if it's, you know, raw cane sugar, if it's maple syrup, if it's honey, it's all the same. There are slight differences, but they really are pretty irrelevant when it comes to what's going on in your body and how it affects you. So sugar is sugar is sugar. And so the question is, you know, how much are you having? Is it a condiment or is like, you know, is it like most Americans where you have a pound a day of sugar and flour, that's not good. So if you don't have sugar in your life as a regular thing and you want to put a little honey or sugar in your tea or coffee, that's okay, right? It's not the sugar that you put in your food. It's the sugar that corporations put in your food that really drives the problem. So I really encourage you to not just think about the little bit you're putting in, but what is all the hidden sugar? It's in ketchup, it's in salad dressing, it's in yogurt, it's in everything. It's in you know, soy milk, I mean, it's just everywhere. So things that you think are healthy are often not. So the way I think about it is once you've kind of healed your body and you're stable, the sugar is more of like a recreational treat. It's not a main course, it's a recreational treat. You may want a glass of wine, but you're not going to have a bottle of wine every night. So don't fool yourself by justifying eating different kinds of sugar thinking they're healthier than one another. They're all the same, sugar, sugar, sugar. and just realize it's a recreational drug and you'll be fine. Well, that's all the time we have for today. If you like this video, be sure to share with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. And if you have any questions, you can tweet them to me or send your video submissions to drhyman.com and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you. Thanks for watching.