CC: What Kind of Anxiety Do You Have? With Dr. Nicole Cain

Hi everyone and welcome to Coach's Corner. I love this episode. My guest and I talk about a lot. Yes, we talk about anxiety and the different types of anxiety and we also talk about some really cool herbal remedies for PMS perimenopause anxiety. We kind of nerd out on a lot of things, so I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. My guest today is Dr. Nicole Kane. She's a naturopathic physician in the state of Arizona and her approach to mental health is multidisciplinary, medical, psychological and holistic. She's a pioneer in integrative approaches for mental and emotional wellness. She also has her degree in clinical psychology training and EMDR and as I mentioned is a nd her latest book, Panic Proof comes out this week. You can grab your copy anywhere books are sold. Also in the Show Notes, I put a link to her website specifically on frequently asked questions about the nine different types of anxiety. So if you want more information on that, she goes into them in great detail on that page. And then there's also a link to the free quiz on that page as well. Before we dive in, I want to thank my sponsors for this week. The first is Air Doctor. I love Air Doctor air purifiers. It's one of the purifiers I have in my home, particularly the one I have in space where Athena sleeps. So that tells you how much I Trust Air Doctor air purifiers. You know, we take in about 20,000 breaths per day and spend about 90% of our time indoors. That indoor air we breathe can be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air. What do we do? Well, we get an Air Doctor air purifier which filters out 99.99% of dangerous contaminants in dangerous of dangerous probably dander dangerous contaminants so your lungs don't have to. This includes allergens, pet dander, dust mites, mold spores, even bacteria and viruses. Air Doctor comes with a 30 back money guarantee, so if you don't love it, just send it back minus shipping. Head over to Air Doctor Pro.com and use promo code over it and you'll receive up to 300 off air purifiers exclusive to podcast customers. You'll also receive a three year warranty on any unit which is an additional $84 value. That's huge. Look for the special by going to airdoctorpro.com that's a I R D O C T-O R P R O.com and use promo code over it at checkout. I also want to thank my sponsor, Organifi. You get 20% off all your Organifi products anytime you go to Organifi.com overit or use promo code overit at checkout. One thing I've really been loving lately is their red juice. It's a caffeine free energy boost provided by nature's best. Real berries, powerful adaptations, and extremely low sugar. All of Organifi products are USDA organic certified, glyco free certified and organic non GMO certified. That's really hard to do in today's day and age. So a little more about red juice. It's packed with things like chaga mushrooms, great antioxidants, decreases fatigue. Cordyceps, which is an adaptogenic mushroom that can support energy imbalance within the body. Rhodiola, which is traditionally used to help the body adapt to physical, emotional or environmental stress. And red beet, an antioxidant powerhouse that contains essential nutrients, minerals and nitrates. It also just tastes really good. Low sugar, low calorie and zero caffeine. I'm finding it great over ice since it's still hot here in Texas. Oh my God, somebody help me. Please let it get below 90s or even, even below 85. Like, let's just get some cool weather. Take me back to California. Get all your Organifi products for 20% off again at Organifi.com overit o r g a n I f I.com overit or use promo code overit at checkout. And now onto my interview with Dr. Nicole Kane. Nicole, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here.

Oh, it's such a joy. Thanks for having me.

So we're going to be talking about anxiety and that seems to be something that most people, especially listeners to my show, have struggled with, do struggle with, or go in and out of. So I'd love to start with just contexting it. How do you define anxiety?

Anxiety is a feeling of disempowerment when we experience arousal and arousal, not necessarily like positive arousal, but any sort of sensation where we feel activated, where our heart is beating faster, we may feel restless, our thoughts may speed up. And so when we get that arousal and then we feel disempowered, that's when I call it anxiety.

And is anxiety something we learn?

Yes, absolutely. It's an adaptation. And so everything that happens to us, everything that doesn't happen to us, will inform your mind, your body, your nervous system, your other adaptive systems like your gut and Your hormones about your reality. So all of these things that did happen, that may be problematic or stressors or overwhelming, or it could be positive, or it could be things that didn't happen, maybe neglect or unmet needs, all of that will inform the way that you adapt. And so if we adapt in a way where we don't feel like we have personal power, whether our, our relationships or whether in our health or our economics, all of those adaptations can inform us to be anxious. And so it can be something that we learn. Whereas feeling aroused or feeling activated is a totally normal biological process. Just a big difference is how we learned to label it, what the association is.

Why do you think anxiety has such a negative connotation? Like nobody wants anxiety, but are there any positives to it?

Anxiety is what helps us be safe. And all of those adaptations came along for a reason. And the medical system desires. Healthcare practitioners desire to relieve suffering. And they look at anxiety as suffering, which of course makes sense. Anxiety is not a pleasant experience. It's pretty, actually pretty awful in some cases. And so the, the language, the nomenclature around it is this person is suffering. Suffering is bad, therefore this experience must be bad. And treatments aim to reduce anxiety, to reduce suffering. So we use benzodiazepines like Xanax or Klonopin to stimulate GABA to try to block anxious signaling from being sent through our body. Or we try to talk therapy them out of it. Oh, you shouldn't feel this way. It's not log. All the different tools and strategies that we use teaches us that anxiety is a problem to be solved, as opposed to anxiety being a wise adaptation to a body that's giving us information about what needs healing and how, whether it's something going on in our environment, in our present. Maybe you do a lot of inner child work and your, your mission and your work. So something that may have happened or didn't happen when we were little. So our symptoms are informing us about what needs healing and how. But the anxiety then is paired with those feelings and those messages with a sense of, I don't have power, I feel afraid. I fear of the fear. I don't know what to do about it. I just have to make it stop. And that's, that's when anxiety becomes a problem as opposed to a solution to a problem.

Yeah, I think that a lot of people have like different types of anxiety, different things that they would call anxiety producing for them. And I know that you go through in your book the nine different types of anxiety. I think before we dig deeper I'd love for you to go through those.

Yeah. If we look at all of the data that comes out in the research, we look at what people report when they're feeling anxious, they'll report symptoms from head to toe. And if we look at all of that data and we just put it into one bucket and we say, oh, well, that's. It's anxiety. You may be throwing up or you may have horrible migraines. We treat it all basically the same. It's all anxiety. And I think that we can do better. I think research has showed us that our body is very wise and our symptoms can give us really specific information on what needs corrected. And so if we look at all the research, we look at what the presentation of anxiety looks like across all different individuals experiences is we can categorize it into nine systems. And those are thought anxiety, gut anxiety, nervous system anxiety, chest anxiety, depressive anxiety, anger anxiety, endocrine anxiety, immune system anxiety, and trauma anxiety. And so we could totally dive deeper into that. But a good place to start if. If you're listening to this ep, this conversation, you're like, wait a second, that was a lot. Hold on. I have. I have a free quiz online. And it's. The quiz is also in the book. And so you can definitely go and take that and figure out what type most resonate with and then go from there.

I'd love for you to go through some of those, though, because, like, endocrine anxiety. What is that?

Okay, endocrine anxiety. This is your endocrine system, which is your hormones. And so we've seen in research that if somebody has an imbalance in their estrogen, especially around times when our hormones are changing. So puberty, pregnancy, our cycles, menopause, perimenopause, when our hormones change, we see flares of anxiety. And some people, they just live in a constant state of anxiety due to imbalances in their hormones.

Okay, so this is like really talking about a chemical imbalance. Not necessarily. Well, we could say trauma causes a chemical imbalance, but this is like really like there's something chemically that's producing anxiety. And until that gets sorted out of balance, it would be hard to see a significant reduction.

Exactly. In my book, I talk about this woman, Charlotte, who I worked with, who came in to see me, who had really awful anxiety. She was like nine months postpartum, and so she was losing a ton of weight. She was really restless, really anxious. She goes to her primary care, and her primary care is like, hey, you lost your baby weight. That's exciting. And being a new mom is super stressful. Here's. Here's a antidepressant you can take. And so she takes the antidepressant, but she's feeling worse. If anything, she's got a lot of nausea and she has no sex drive, and she's still really anxious. Her heart rate is really fast. Her blood pressure is really high. And she comes in and I ask her, have you had any just basic annual testing done? She said, well, I had it done when I was pregnant, but not since then. So we reran her basic testing. Her insurance covered this and included a full thyroid panel. And we diagnosed her with hyperthyroid graves. And when she received the appropriate treatment, all of her symptoms got better. What had been cast off by her doctors just kind of mom brain was actually an endocrine imbalance. And so, yes, exactly what you said is we want to get to the root of why your body's producing these symptoms. Do they come from the brain? Do they come from the hormones? Once we know what that is, then we could be strategic in treating it.

My gosh. We could do a whole other podcast about the lack of care for postpartum women. I mean, you basically have a whole different body after having a baby. It's just.

It's crazy. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Well, that makes sense. I don't remember all nine, but I'd love to go through these because I think our listeners will be fascinated by them. So anger, anxiety. I'm going to guess that is anger you have not processed and you're holding inside.

Yes.

And it creates anxiety.

Yeah, exactly. It's. So when we think of fight, flight, freeze. I feel like we often forget flight and fight. We all just think of, like, freeze. Like we're, like, frozen in fear. But our body can mobilize us to run from the tiger, fight the tiger, or try to freeze, to be invisible from the tiger and anger anxiety. When we experience anxiety or arousal, it can make us. We could feel anger, we could feel frustration. And so if you feel. When you're overwhelmed, you just feel like, please don't interrupt me, or I can't handle one more email. I think I just feel like I want to throw my phone or I'm so angry at this person, it can be due to anxiety. And what's really fun is when we get into the nuance of this, it allows us to get really strategic with our treatment. So, for example, in Ayurveda, which is that something that you, your audience has heard about yet?

Oh, I'm sure, yeah. My audience is pretty savvy. Yeah. And global. But you can, you can. For those who haven't, we don't want to leave anybody out. So for those who haven't, if you want to give a brief definition, that's great.

I love that. Sometimes I get so excited, I'm like, I want to over explain. So I love the opportunity to dig in. So most of us are familiar with traditional Chinese medicine. We've heard of acupuncture and maybe even you've been to an acupuncturist and gotten herbs. And so that traditional form of medicine comes out of China. Comparatively, we have a form of medicine that came out of India called Ayurveda and that precedes traditional Chinese medicine by thousands of years. It's a very old form of medicine. And the belief in Ayurveda is that when we go out of balance that we get symptoms. The goal is to put us back in balance, to help the mind, the body, the spirit be really healthy so that it just self corrects, self heals. Just like you fall and scrape your knee, your body will heal that. Even if you don't try, you just forget about it. It'll heal itself. And so the goal of Ayurveda is to put us back into balance. And so this is really fun when it comes to the types of anxiety, like anger anxiety, because when we look at the unique ways to treat anxiety, we don't want to just have like a big bucket of like, well, benzo antidepressant. Talk therapy. Ayurveda gives us even more tools. And so anger anxiety, according to Ayurveda is caused by an excessive amount of heat. It's caused by like, you know, you see those like Looney Tunes cartoons where their head just like pops off and it's like a fire engine sound and there's like fire and smoke coming out. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So that, that's, that's pitta. And so theoretically, if you have somebody who's really angry and anxious and agitated, some of us, we feel great when we eat like a hot soup or a cup of hot tea. But if you have someone who's got a pitta imbalance and they're, they're overheated and that's fueling frustration and agitation. And you offer them a calming cup of tea, that's adding heat and may make them worse. And so Ayurveda has a whole list of things that we can do that is specific to this unique manifestation of symptoms that will put you back in balance. And so eat cooling foods like cilantro and raw salads and cucumbers and smoothies and iced beverages, as opposed to someone who's more in a, let's say depressive anxiety state. So that's one of the other nine types is depressive anxiety. Who maybe in that state of anxiety they are lethargic, they're, they're heavy, they're, they feel like there's a weight on their body. They feel unmotivated and depressed and their brain is just worrying, but it doesn't get anywhere. And maybe they want to just get under the blankets and have a hot cup of tea. It's a very different state, not only in how they live and experience that, but biophysiologically it's a different state. And so Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, some of these other holistic modalities will give us strategies that work better. So for depressive anxiety, we could talk about herbalism. So there are wonderful plants out there in the plant kingdom that can help. They've been studied to increase GABA to calm the nervous system. They've been studied for their ability to balance serotonin and dopamine, bring down inflammation. And some herbs are naturally more stimulating and warming and some are more relaxing and cooling. And so can you list some of.

Those relaxing and cooling herbs for people? Yes, and the other side as well.

I am here for, I love herbs. So for example, when we think about, let's say anxiety, where you feel really agitated, really angry, really frustrated, a great herb for that would be lavender. And so lavender is cooling. The literature studies it for increasing gaba, so it can decrease anxiety. And it's been studied as a very effective antidepressant. And so this could be taking the lavender in as a tea or a tincture or a capsule. I think that tends to work much better than inhalation. Inhalation of like an essential oil can be anti anxiety, but it doesn't seem to help as much with more of that deeper long standing anxiety. I like using it internally in the form of a tincture instead, as opposed to depressive anxiety.

Wait, before you, before you go on there, have you heard of Lovella?

Heck Yes. By iti.

Yes. So Lovella, when I was dealing with PPA and PPD, pretty severe, undiagnosed for 18 months, even though I knew something was wrong because I'm so high functioning, no one really saw it. And then finally I'm like, I'm like finding someone because I'm diagnosing myself and got help from Multiple people. And I. This, I took Lovella and I took it breastfeeding. I made that decision intuitively. I looked at the ingredients. The only thing I don't love about it is it has canola oil in it, which really irks me. I'm like, come on, guys, this is.

Like such a good product.

Why did you.

Why? Why?

But for anybody who's interested in trying, it's. I did it short term. I probably used it for, I don't know, two months. And occasionally, if I'm ever feeling like at certain times in my cycle when I'm like, okay, like I'm feeling a little, I'll. I'll take it. And it's not, it's not like Xanax.

Right.

It's not like a benzo that just. Right, you know, knocks you out. You're completely functioning. It's not a sedative. But to me, it just kind of like brought me back to normal. Just was like, it was like after a spa day, you know?

Yes.

And it wasn't a magic potion. I also did that with therapy and with like looking at other things. But, you know, I found it because I just. My anxiety really showed up in like not being able to sleep at night and just be more hyper vigilant. And so I think it was just something that, on the physical level, because I believe, like, you can't just. I'm sure you do too. You can't just treat one level. Like, you can't just treat the physical, you can't just treat the emotional. It's like, like, let's look at the whole picture and, and see where we need some assistance. And I think especially postpartum, when hormones are all wackadoodle and all like your body's trying to figure out who am I and what am I and what's my sleep cycle and breast. I was still breastfeeding. So all of that having some support on the physical level that you feel aligned with, you know, can be really supportive. So I'm glad you've heard of Labella, because I found it really helpful.

Yeah, it's so nice because it's just in a capsule as opposed to having to do the tincture. I like the taste of herbal tinctures, but some people are like, oh my God, you're. You're asking me to do what? And I'm like, it's great, I swear.

And the other thing I really love, especially in a tincture, is lemon balm. I don't know if that's something you are people, but I really love lemon balm.

You're literally taking the words out of my mouth. Lavender combines so well with lemon balm and lemon balm. The Latin name for that is Melissa officinalis. And they describe this plant as, like, sunshine for the heart. It's. It's like. It's like you go outside. I'm in Michigan right now, and there's some lemon balm growing outside, and it's part of the mint family, but if you rub the leaves, they smell lemony. That's part of why she got that nickname. But it combines really well. And so some of these plants are. They're synergistic. It's like you get together with your best friend and just like, magic happens. It's like you're amazing on your own, your bestie is amazing on her own. But when you two come together, it's just like gloriousness. It's like unicorns and sparkles. Right? That's. That's the same with lemon balm lavender. And I would even maybe mix that, like, if we're making a tincture together or a tea together, like, and maybe a little bit of hawthorne or contagious. Have you tried that one yet?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. I. Mine was like a deep sleep herbal.

Herbal.

And then lemon balm and little Vella and then L. Theanine. Those were my.

Oh, man.

Those were the things that really got me.

Got you through.

Supported me. Yeah. And to, you know, all the. All other levels, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Yeah. Yes. And lemon balm is awesome for. It's a great antidepressant. And so if you. If you deal with, like, that spicy, warm, angry, agitated anxieties, you maybe want to put a little cooling lavender in there. But if you also have maybe postpartum and you got the green light from your. Your midwife or your OB and they said, yeah, add in a little bit of lemon balm to lift the mood, to further bring down anxiety for that synergy. That's amazing. And then mother wart, that cretagious or mother wart is another one that I use with cretagus. But mother wart, I always describe this as a plant that's like the mother energy, that hug that we just need. And it's so good. Postpartum, it balances the hormones, can help with postpartum symptoms physically and in terms of mood, like depression and anxiety. So that would feel like a really great unicorn recipe. I love that.

Since we're on postpartum.

Yes.

Let's Skip ahead to per menopause.

Yeah, let's skip ahead.

Let's just go all over. Yeah, let's be very feminine, be nonlinear. What are some of your favorite ways to balance? Because per menopause is, you know, can be a decade.

Yeah.

So as women are starting to make that transition, especially noticing sleep patterns are changing, weight patterns are changing, mind is changing, libido is changing. What herbs do you love for this season of life?

I'm going to give you my number one favorite herb first. And so everybody who's listening, write this down. If it's for your future, if it's for your partner, for your bestie, write it down. This plant is amazing. And so many of us have heard of ashwagandha. This is, this is not the one I'm going to tell you about, but ashwagandha is often described as like the adaptogen, energy anti aging plant. But it works better for men. And some women, they get acne from it. They feel worse from it. It's meh. You know, for some women. In fact, I was just talking to one of the clinicians in my office here who took ashwagandha and she had an adverse reaction. She's like, is there really anything that's like an ashwagandha but for women? And I said, yes, girl. So it's called shatavari, which is wild asparagus. I'll spell it. S H A T V A R I. And this plant is called the queen of herbs. It enhances our well being. It enhances memory, youth, strength, intelligence. It strengthens the mind, the body. It's an ovarian tonic. Your ovaries have been working really hard your whole life and they need a little bit of tlc. And so this plant is nutritive. It's balancing, it balances the gut. It's a breast tonifier. It's an adaptogen, it's an aphrodisiac. Shatavari is amazing. I love this. For perimenopausal and postmenopausal women.

I'm googling as we talk. Yeah, because it's the one I haven't heard of, which is rare. Do you like tincture powder capsules? Does it matter?

I always like to do tinctures of plants unless you can get them fresh and make your own. Because when we look at eclectic herbal medicine and, and from an ayurvedic perspective, we always think about prana. And so like that's the vitality that's still in the medicine. So it's like, is there life? So if you get an apple and you pull it off of the tree and you eat that apple like right off the tree while you're walking through the vineyard or the apple orchard, it's gonna, your experience is gonna be different versus if you buy a bag of frozen apples that have been in the Costco freezer section for like a year. Right. So if you can, is ordering them the plant as fresh as possible. And so when we buy it as powders, oftentimes it's just not going to hold on to as much of the quality. And then we also think about how we want to pull out all those constituents. And so with this plant that we're talking about, wild asparagus is there's things like steroid osponins and bioflavonoids and rutins and all sorts of other things. And a lot of them need alcohol extract to really process them properly so that you're getting the high enough dosage of what you want. So all that being said, I like to do a tincture and the research says that you can get pretty good results with like 2 to 5 mils 3 times a day.

2 to 5 mil 3 times a day. Okay.

Yeah.

Finding one tincture from Texas medicinals, I have to, I'll have to look for it. Oh my gosh.

Get it, get it.

The other thing I've been using, because I'm both postpartum and perimenopause and breastfeeding both, I'm all of those. So one thing that I have found, because everybody's like, you just need to take progesterone. But taking progesterone, even if I took it from ovulation to bleed, like, was really making my cycle a little wackadoodle. And so I started using Anna's wild EM cream.

Yeah.

And have really, like, noticed a difference. Like I'm. It's my first full cycle using it and I'm like, wow, I'm a couple of days before my period and I don't want to kill my husband. My cycle is its average, you know, 28ish day length instead of being like 71 days or 42 days or like all of that. So can you tell us a little bit about this magic wild yam cream? And P.S. if everyone kind of is noticing we're talking about things in nature, not pharmaceuticals. So yes, would love for you to chat a little about that if you're familiar with it.

I love this plant. So wild yam, it's called Diocerea Villosa and so that's spelled D I, O, S, C O, R, E, A and then V. You'll find it when you do that. And this is an amazing plant. And you can take it internally, you can use it externally. And so some people, there's some arguments about, does it work because it's progesterone. Progest. What words are hard. It increases progesterone, or is it something else that works from it? And so they did this study and they took out one of the constituents from the plant and they made it into diosgenin. And that got commercially processed into progesterone. And so they used to make that it was originated from wild yam, which you were describing, from Mexico. And then they started changing the way that they were processing it. And it's not the same thing anymore. So now they're using a different constituent from the plant, and it's largely from China. And so we want to be mindful when we're purchasing it, what plant, what part of the dioceria is in there and where is it harvested from? Where did they grow it? Because that can affect everything. But, like, this plant rocks. It can help with nausea in pregnancy. Some midwives have used it to prevent miscarriage. They'll add it with a little bit of ginger viburnum. It's good for the gut. So if you have inflammation and you have gut anxiety, one of the other nine types, and so maybe you're perimenopausal and it's showing up in your hormones and your gut is a mess, and you have all of the things. Diaceria can, like, feed two birds with one pellet. It's awesome for inflammation of the gut. It also helps with inflammation in the uterus and the ovaries. And so if you've had some issues hormonally or maybe endometriosis or, you know, pcos, polycystic ovaries. And you're looking for something that can help balance out the ovaries, the uterus, your hormones. That's a really good plant for that. And so then with.

Just because I mentioned Anna's, and I want to make sure I'm. I'm endorsing anything that that's good. So I get it from Australia. I'm looking to see where it's sourced, but I'm having trouble finding it. Do you have any, like, brands that you really love? If people are looking for more, you know, and I have nothing against hrt. Like, I'm not a. I'm not a no to it at all. I've just been finding other things that have been helpful so far. But if people are looking, is there. Is there a source that you trust?

I love mountain rose herbals, and they're out of Portland, and I love Gaia, and they're out of East Coast, I think North Carolina, if not South Carolina, although I don't know how they weathered the storm that we just had.

Right, I know, I know.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's wonderful. So those two locations are really, really wonderful. And so whenever I buy mine, if I'm going to take it as internally, I would do like 5ml, three times a day internally. And I think applying it topically is really good. And then maybe when you're applying it topically is mix it with something that will help drive the diaceria, like, into the system. So something that has a small molecular size that can help with that. And so that's a time when we can really have fun with essential oils is maybe you might mix it with a little bit, if you're on the toasty side, maybe a little bit of lavender or maybe a little bit of peppermint. If you are wanting something that will warm you up is maybe mix a little bit of castor oil with your dioceria and then put some heat on it. And that's a great way, especially if you're dealing with joint pain or if you need to get blood flowing at that area. It's my favorite.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I could just play witchy woman with you, like.

Yeah.

For the rest of the interview, but I know we're supposed to talk about anxiety too, so I love it.

I love.

I mean, my. I always think about, like, do I just want to go back and get my nd and have a whole other, like, side career? Because I love natural medicine so much and even, you know, having a daughter and. And really being able to, like, I give her lemon balm tea at night and you do. Yeah, yeah. Just try, you know, to do things. And she understands, like, we have a certain way that we relate to supplements because I don't want her to relate to supplements like there's a problem, you know, And. But yeah, I've just. It's. It's just been. It's just nice to. To turn to nature when we can and no shame when. When, you know, I really being a human as long as I have and, and seeing as many people on the planet that I have and I have had my. My background with pharmaceuticals and I have zero judgment and Like, I really think whatever works for the person. That's what's, what's most most most important. It's just really fun and empowering to know that we can find answers in nature too. So, so let's go back to the nine types of anxiety. Maybe you can pick out a couple others that might not be so obvious to people that you could spend a little time defining.

So let's talk about immune system anxiety, because I see this all the time, especially in a post COVID pandemic world. Now that we're in an endemic Covid, I'm seeing a lot more of this. And so I think it's really interesting to explore in more detail. So, immune system anxiety. This is anxiety that is associated with imbalances in immune system or immune system function. And so one really good concrete example is if you're, if you kind of pause for a second and then ask yourself, do I ever experience itchy eyes, watery eyes, runny nose, or maybe even post nasal drainage? Or maybe you get like a little bit of a cough or itchy skin or redness or a rash. If you do, then you might be dealing with an imbalance in histamine. And histamine is an immune system cell that it creates inflammation. But we all, for the most part, most of us have heard of histamine. And we know if I'm like having an allergic reaction, pop a Benadryl and then many of us will then zonk out on the couch if it sedates us. And so we know about that, we know about histamine. But what many people don't realize is that histamine can be as stimulating to the nervous system as adrenaline. And so that same little friendly, little allergy causing chemical could also be behind autonomic arousal, which could. Histamine can make us stay up at night and struggle with sleeping. Histamine could be giving us allergies. Histamine could be giving us panic attacks. Histamine could be causing a whole myriad of issues because histamine increases inflammation. And so then let's talk about that. So let's talk about the whole domino. So imagine that we have a whole room full of dominoes and if we trigger one, it falls over and then it just sends off the whole, the whole cycle, right? So let's say that your body has a lot of histamine and we can talk about the three main reasons that might happen. But let's say that that's happening and your histamine is through the roof. You're having terrible allergies terrible sleep, terrible inflammation. So here's the domino. So your body's in an inflamed state and inflammation will go to the brain. And there are inflammatory detectors in the brain, like your microglia. Those are immune system inflammatory cells in the brain. They can release inflammation. And all of that will tell your emotional processing part of your brain, your amygdala, that danger is afoot. The body doesn't like to be in uncontrolled inflammation. So the amygdala will respond to that danger signal by creating a cascade of the stress response. We call this the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis gets activated and that results in lots of cortisol to be released. Cortisol is your stress hormone, right? And so then when cortisol gets released, one of its jobs is to suppress inflammation. When cortisol gets really high, it could also result in your estrogen dropping. And so now you have histamine, high inflammation, danger signals to your brain. And now your danger signals are causing high cortisol levels, inflammation suppressed. Now your estrogen is off balance. When your estrogen goes off balance, we don't have the estrogen protective effects. And so now we have a hormone, anxiety that was caused by an immune system anxiety. Right. And so the question is, we could follow this and see all the different dominoes that fall. But the question that we ask is by knowing, okay, I have immune system anxiety symptoms, I took the quiz. I really resonate with immune system anxiety. The question that we want to ask is why? What is out of balance? Or how have I adapted in a way that my immune system is producing histamine. And so there are three main ways. There are three main reasons for this. Reason number one is that you're pulling too much histamine into the system. So then we get a chance to audit our habits, what we're eating, what we're not eating. Are you eating high histamine foods? Citrus, alcohol, caffeine, Are you detoxing histamine? That's way number two is your body has three main pathways for detoxing histamine. Is your body able to detox effectively? And so then we're going to put that on a shelf for a second because we, we could totally explore histamine detox. But then the third way is, is your body now producing histamine? And so then we get to see, okay, I'm eating a low histamine diet, I'm regularly detoxing, and yet I still have high histamine. And so there May be an imbalance in, for example, your gut microbiome. And you have a predominance of histamine producing bacteria in your gut. And so suddenly, instead of just having anxiety, benzo, period, allergies, Benadryl, period, and then on and on and on, we have this whole cohesive understanding of how our symptoms are, telling us what we need to explore so we can heal. And so that was a lot. I knew I just threw like all of immunology 101 at you. But tell me what. You tell me your questions. That's okay.

No, that actually made a lot of sense, I think for people who are like, you know, do I have a histamine issue? Mentioning those foods is important. What? Because I've seen a lot of lifestyle, not just what you eat, and particular sort of ways of being that increase this. Just wondering if you're seeing not just histamine, but the immune system anxiety, what do you see as some other triggers beyond just what we're eating?

For this, the first thing that comes to mind, I know it's not a habit, but this is. This is an obstacle to healing for so many people that can come from our environment is living in a moldy building. And so I'm in Arizona. I'm in Arizona half the year. And we have such a problem with mold. It's the desert, and we have such a problem with mold. And so mold can. The mycotoxins. There are different kinds from different mold species. They can release toxins that cause inflammation, that cause damage to the gut, change your microbiome, change your hormones. And it's a really tricky illness to diagnose. We call it the great mimicker. And so when I think about histamine, if someone has histamine and they have anxiety and they have symptoms that may indicate detoxification, I always want to. We need to explore mold. And my favorite resource for this is Dr. Jill Christa. She wrote the book beyond the Mold. And on her website, she has a free mold self assessment checklist. But that's the first place I would go. Absolutely. If someone has immune system. Of course, when we're looking at environmental toxicity, I'm also thinking about who's the number one person that has personal care products. You know, we go to Target. And who's buying all the personal care products is women. Like today. You and I just talked. I have like, cute eyeliner on, and I have a little bit of like, helmet hairspray in my hair. And these things have been studied by the environmental working group to contain Ingredients that could be problematic for the body. And if we're not effectively able to detox them, then they can hang around and they can cause issues that we then see downstream. And so I'm thinking about solvents, I'm thinking about glycephate in food and thinking about heavy metals. We see heavy metals look just like minerals to the body. And so you can have low, low grade, constant amounts of these metals that can then get substituted in your chemical pathways. And this is a big problem in perimenopause. That's what I was actually thinking when we were talking about earlier. Not to, like, circle back, but so many women, they go through perimenopause, and now they're getting all these hot flashes, all these symptoms. They feel like they're a completely different person in completely different bodies. And their doctors are like, well, perimenopause sucks, and we can do better than that. And so what we want to do is we want to look and say, okay, well, what was it like when you were menstruating? Because that's data. And if there were any symptoms that were showing up during your menstrual cycles, during, you know, if you had pm, PMS or PMDD or postpartum, is that that data? If the root cause of those symptoms weren't addressed before menopause, then they're probably still present. They just show up in a different way because your body's system of expressing doesn't have the same things. Right. And so in those individuals, then I would want to know about environmental exposures. I would want to know if there's something that could be going on now. And then we would treat that.

Do you mind saying that site again to take the mold quiz?

Oh, yes. Dr. Jill. Christa with a C or a K? Oh, she's Christa. C R, I, S, T A. And her book is called beyond the Mold.

Okay.

Yeah, it's really good.

Yeah. Interesting. And this is where I have to, like, rein myself back in, because I follow, like, the mold stuff. The, you know, and I, like, worry about my house, but it was built in 2018. I'm like, oh, my gosh. You know, we've got. We've got an air sample mold test, but I haven't done, like, the super invasive mold tests. And. But none of us are, like, displaying any symptoms, so hopefully, hopefully we're good.

Good.

But I've had mold before, and when I lived in California and I had panic attacks for a year until I.

Got, like, it cleared out.

I think it can hit us in different ways. Like some of us it can hit neurologically. Some of us it can hit more immune system wise. I also got sick a lot more that year, obviously. And then it's crazy making, especially here in America. My husband and I always talk about like leaving this country because the amount of toxins, like, I think I'm doing a pretty good job with my kid, but everything has grappling it, lead, mercury, like I. The one treat she had are these organic smoothie melts from Amara. And it was like organic coconut milk, organic spirulina, basil and apple. And there's like different flavors and she loved them. It was like the one fat freeze dried fruit. And it just came out lead, arsenic, mercury and these things. And it's just, it's crazy making. It's crazy making so. Because not all of us can live like off grid away from chemtrails and glyphosate drops and you know, have our own chickens and our own hydroponic garden and seriously, go. Which is what you'd have to do to. To eliminate toxins in this modern world, especially here in America.

Right?

How can we like integrate daily detoxing into our life? You know, like, what are like, I give my daughter chlorella every day and some other stuff to try to help like move things and ello. And what are some things that we can do? Because it's, it's, I think, hard. Even if you buy all EWG verified stuff and you shop organic, it's tricky to avoid all this stuff. So what can we put into place to help it make its way out?

So here's the message of hope, my friends, is our bodies are naturally designed to detoxify and we can support that process. And oftentimes supporting that process will help remove the obstacles to cure that feel like they're getting in our ways of living the lives that we dream of and having health and vitality is the body can naturally take care of a lot of that. And so there are practical ways to do that. And so number one is we want to move blood and lymph. And so that's what, that's what the old teachers naturopathic medicine is based on. They started with water cure doctors. They're these people that were using alternating hot and cold water on animals and on farms. And the animals got so much better. They're like, what if we try this on humans? And it was just so amazing. The royal family's like, we're going to travel and get treated by this farmer. And so this is the Beginning. And so Lindlar, Henry Lindlar, talked about, when in doubt, move blood and lymph. And so how do we do that? So this could be stretching, it could be exercising, it could be jumping on a trampoline. It could be doing alternating hot and cold. So you could get in the shower. If you have the constitution to warm up for 60 seconds, really warm, really hot, your skin's going to turn pink. The blood vessels vasodilate, meaning they get big, and it flushes all this wonderful blood to your extremities. And then you switch it to as cold as it will go for 30 seconds. And then your blood vessels are going to vasoconstrict, meaning they constrict. And if that went too long, you'll notice that you get pale and maybe blue, right? Because it's squeezing all those blood vessels. And so then when you alternate, you're creating this pumping action from head to toe. Vasodilate blood vessels bigger, vasoconstrict blood vessels smaller. So that's a way of moving blood and lymph. And so figuring out what works for you every day is figuring out how you can move your blood and lymph, whether it's exercise or hydro or maybe even qigong. I think about there's this really adorable individual, and he's dressed like he's a monk, and he's dressed in the outfit, and he's teaching people how to move their qi, and he bounces and he taps on the body, and so it moves blood and lymph. So that's, number one, move your blood and lymph every day. And then number two is you want to open your auncteries. And this may be a new word for most people, a moncteries are the. The outlets your body uses to get things out. So this is stool, urine, sweat, tears, expectoration, like you speak bit or blow your nose, get mucus out. This is screaming breathing. So anything now that you've mobilized and moved, everything, that stuff that's in there that your body doesn't want to hold on to anymore, now we want to get it out. So we need to be having a bowel movement every day. And so whatever you need to do to make that happen, whether it's probiotics, probiotic food, fermented foods, kimchi, yogurt, magnesium, vitamin C, anything you could do to move your bowels, and then hydrating and putting minerals, wonderful minerals in your water, like Himalayan pink sea salt, pinch of that in your water to add the minerals back in so you urinate sweat every day. But here's a really important hack for sweating is I have this woman. She has a history of all sorts of breast cancers, hyperthyroid, graves disease, thyroid removed, all these issues. She worked at Dow Chemical. And so after all these years of these chronic issues, we finally tested her. She had really high environmental toxicity. And so we started a detox process with her. Everything was going really, really well, but she kept getting these rashes on the back of her legs. And so we're like, okay, what's happening? Why are you getting these really specifically placed rashes? And after lots of digging and exploring, we figured out that she was sitting on the vinyl seat of her golf cart, and she's sweating, but the sweat is just getting sandwiched between her legs in the seat of the golf cart. And so all the inflammatory factors, the irritating salt and the sweat, any toxicity that she was sweating out was just getting pressed against her skin. So when you're sweating is try to wipe the sweat off of your body periodically. So bring like a microfiber shammy that maybe even has some clothes colloidal woven into it, or if you can rinse off after you work out before everything dries. And so sweat, but wipe it off. And so those are the two first things. And then the very last thing.

Does a shower after sweat count or not? Doesn't really do.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And if you can shower cold, which I know sucks, but if you can shower cold, you're going to close. You're going to close all of those. You don't want to reabsorb everything into your body when it's all resting on your skin is. So if you get in the cold shower, it's gonna brush off of your body. You're not gonna absorb as much back in.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Cool.

When you're in the shower too, you can do skin brushing. So which is like, take a washcloth and then just rub it on your skin, like a little massage and rub in circles, starting at your extremities, like your toes and your fingertips, and then rub all the way up to your heart. Great.

Amazing. All right. So much. So many great tips here. I want to just bring it back to anxiety in.

Yes. In.

In the context of this interview as we wrap it up here, because I know your book Panic Proof, is coming out pretty much now, and then we'll have everybody where to get it. So I think a good place to start before we dive in too much is what's the difference between panic and anxiety?

Oh, I love this Question. So the conventional medical model says that panic is distinctly separate, but I would argue that they're not because the biological process is fundamentally the same. Our body releases adrenaline, it releases cortisol, all sorts of things. The difference that we see in people's experience and why in the the medical system, the diagnostic statistical manual that we use for diagnosis, says that they're separate, is that people feel like panic attacks come out of the blue, versus generalized anxiety disorder can have spikes in anxiety. So you're anxious more days than not. And then that anxiety can spike into an anxiety attack is they feel that those are separate. But when we really start to become mindful of the whispers from our body via symptoms, we often see that there were indicators long before they spike all the way up into panic. And so the way that I would redefine it, and what I think is really more backed by trauma informed research, is that we start in the green zone. So think of a stoplight. We have the green light, which is when the body is calm, the nervous system is calm. You feel really good, relaxed, connected, happy. You sleep good, peaceful, creative. And then something shifts and you start to feel like, ooh, I'm not relaxed anymore. Something is off. I feel like maybe a little annoyed or overwhelmed or agitated or rushed or I'm getting like a little tickling in my tummy. I'm getting a little gut anxiety. And then if that increases and it isn't addressed in that moment, if that imbalance or that problem isn't addressed right away, it may get louder and turn into a shout. And so then we go into the yellow zone. It's getting more intense and you're actually anxious and stressed out. And then if that doesn't get addressed, you go into the red light zone, which is crisis and panic. So I redefine it. And what I think is a change that we're seeing in the profession is that anxiety is more yellow. And then that can go up into the red of extreme panic. And the. And the worst part.

And I feel like, I don't know, maybe this is my own experience, but I feel like panic feels more like something out of control. Like such a physiological thing where anxiety, maybe it's because I've had more tools for it and I haven't had panic in many, many years. So I'm trying to bring myself back. Anxiety feels like almost, you know, you're riding on a galloping horse and you have some reins there. Panic feels like really, you know, kind of out of control. But that's just my unresearched undocumented, firsthand experience with it?

Yes.

For people that have, I know for many people when they have their first panic attack, they think they might be having a heart attack. Yeah, it's a really, really scary experience. And one of the questions I often get is now I have panic about having a panic attack or like anxiety about having another one. And that becomes the source of anxiety and almost panic. What would you tell people that like have anxiety about having another one, especially in a public place or on an airplane or driving or, you know, fill in the blank?

Yeah, the, the first thing is that we experience fear of the fear. And the first thing I want you to know is that anxiety and panic are not dangerous. They feel dangerous, they feel horrible. 80% of people presenting to the emergency department presenting with symptoms that feel like a heart attack. 80% of them, it's anxiety, it's not a heart attack. And so it can feel like a heart attack. It's really, really common. But the body is trying to, trying to get some information across to you. And so what we want to do is we want to support you proactively in reprogramming that pattern of communication so that it doesn't happen anymore. And so what we want to do is we want to give you your power back. So I'm going to give you really briefly, really quickly a four step process which you can find in the book in a lot more detail. But let's say that you're like, okay, I've had panic attacks before. I'm terrified of being on a plane because what if I'm stuck on a plane and I have a panic attack or I'm afraid of getting on the highway because if I panic, I can't pull over on the highway or that I'm out to dinner, I don't want to go anywhere far where I'm out to dinner with my friends if I don't have a car that I can like leave with like those feelings of it happening outside of our control. And so there are tools to manage it in the moment. And there are also things that you can be doing right now to reprogram the brain and body so it doesn't need to go into a red light panic zone. So first of all is I want you to start practicing calming of the nervous system. So when we get activated, our logical parts of the brain get shut down. So your prefrontal cortex, which is your problem solving, analytical part of the brain that's going to shut down and you're not going to have as Much access to that. Your emotional part of the brain is going to get way activated and all the feelings are going to be bigger. As a total aside, there's some research that suggests that people who tend to have anxiety and panic have larger amygdalas in the brain, larger emotional processing parts which make you a superhero in empathy and awareness and attunement of other people. But it could also make you more at risk of panic and anxiety, which, you know, everything has its trade offs. But that first step, what you want to do, is practice calming the body and then creating connections to the logical brain. And it's sort of like if I want to run a marathon, I need to be practicing running every day. I want to strengthen those muscles, get that ability, get that fitness, that physical fitness up. So you're going to practice your calm fitness. And so things that are going to calm the nervous system, this is going to be breathing, especially elongating the exhale. I teach people the four square breath where we inhale for four counts, we hold our breath at the top for four counts, we exhale for four counts, and then we hold our breath at the bottom for four counts. We want to do that slowly to see if you can get between 6 and 10 breaths a minute instead of are average like 15 to 20. So we want to slow the breath down, so that's number one. And then you can calm the nervous system also with touch, taste, temperature, textures. And so this may involve getting up, going to another room and looking at three things you can see, listening to three things you can hear, and then feeling three things you can touch. So that gets us into your body, calms the nervous system. Strong taste like ginger. Rescue remedy, Strong cinnamon, strong peppermint. Activate the vagus nerve to calm the nervous system. So that's step one. Do you have questions about that before we go to two? No.

No.

I love it. So now that your, your emotional brain is calmed down, now you're going to have more analytical brain available. So now you want to practice using your logical brain. You want to start to do the top down, we call it top down work in, in trauma informed psychotherapy. This is like going to talk therapy. This is making your action plans. This is getting educated about what are the root causes for you. This is doing the, the history gathering, this is exploring blood work. This is all of that stuff that requires your analytical brain. Doing puzzles, sudoku, brain teasers, learning a second language, anything that really strengthens your logical brain. Because most of us live on autopilot for much of our day, and so we want to really strengthen the muscle of logical brain. And so then step three is now we're bridging the gap, is now we're going to help our aware, online logical brain start to pay attention to our body. And I have an exercise in the book I call the Stoplight Strategies, which what you would do in that exercise is you're going to notice your green light zone and you're going to write down everything that you feel in your mind, your body, your thoughts, you're going to write those all down. And then you're going to do the same thing for the yellow light zone and the red light zone so that you can start to really become familiar with what is happening in your body and notice it with your logical brain, because otherwise your body might run away and just have a total panic attack. And your brain's like, I'm offline, I don't know why this is, is happening. So you're going to do the stoplight exercise, but I also want you to practice doing interoceptive work. So this may be just a simple 60 second body scan. Is practice doing this maybe once or twice a day is, is just maybe bring your mindful awareness to your feet and just notice and acknowledge without having to change anything, just notice any sensations in your feet, good, bad, neutral. And then slowly work your way up your body, just noticing everything. So your logical brain is practicing becoming attuned to the body. And then step four is the most important step. And do you have thoughts before I jump into the last step? No. Keep going. Okay, so the last step is your brain, your body, your immune system, your nervous system. All of these systems have been programmed in such a way that you may, if you deal with anxiety, they have been programmed so that you deal with anxiety. And there's a reason for that. And I love that you do a lot of Christine, you do a lot of inner child work. And so our childhood experiences can make a huge difference in how we feel in our current experience. Even if we don't remember it, the body may keep the score. And so what that fourth step is, is it's restructuring, reprogramming, reorganizing those old patterns. And so if they're not serving you anymore, we want to intentionally go in and do that. And this is so fun because neuroplasticity, which is how our brain changes and grows, how our nervous system heals, shows us that we can do that. And so it's kind of like if you imagine you're at the top of a mountain and there's ravines that have been dug by years and years of wear down the mountain of rain. And then when the water falls, it's gonna go down that path of least resistance. That's your nervous system. Those are the way that the brain and body synapses have formed, is you can go in and you can change so much of that. You can change and dig new turrets so that the rain goes down to the feeling of power. So this is doing emdr. Breath work, yoga. This is doing things that put you out of your comfort zone, like high ropes courses where you teach yourself how to become aroused and then you teach yourself that you can come out. So I know how to become aroused. I know how to come out. I've done it 60 days in a row. So when panic happens, you're like, oh, we've been here. I know how to be aroused and I know how to come back out.

Then it's not so scary, right? Oh, this has been so, so helpful. I'm going to put a link to the nine different types of anxiety and also your quiz. And can you tell people where they. Where else they can connect with you and where they can get the book?

Yeah, you can find the book anywhere books are sold. My book, Panic Proof, has tons of links, but I love shopping local, so go to your local bookstore and say, I want panic Proof and they'll be able to get it for you. And then I love answering questions. And so if you're reading the book or listening to this episode and you're like, wait, what did she say about that? Or I need clarification, come find me on Instagram and leave a comment. And I love interacting on Instagram. And so that's Dr. Nicole Cain.

Amazing. You are a wealth of knowledge across various modalities. I could nerd out with you about all this stuff for hours. So appreciate you being here today. Congratulations on the book and thank you for all your beautiful work in the world.

Thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.