 and welcome to Holistic Wellness Reveals. I'm Latisha Sharp, and today we are gonna talk all about allergies and how they affect us in a holistic way to be able to approach it with my good friend, Doctor of Chiropractic and functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Jason Pape. Hello, Jason, how are you today? I am well, thanks, however, for you. I'm fabulous. You're in New York. Is it getting warm over there yet? Oh yeah, high 70s today, nice day. Beautiful, so you're a chiropractor. And I've always seen a chiropractor since I was about 11 years old. And there's a different kind of approach to chiropractic care to look at the body. And it's very similar to the holistic approach that I've adopted in my adult life. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, so I mean, really holistic, chiropractic really is a holistic practice. So it is really all about understanding how the body can heal itself and how all the systems all work together very intimately and intricately and that we can affect, affecting one area can affect all other areas. Now, can we look at the body from that whole space, right? And not just be very specific and very different and modularized like a lot of traditional medicine is where the GI doctor and this doctor and that doctor, yes, we are spine doctors, but that's our point of entry to the rest of the body. And we really look at the whole of the person. Ha, I love that, the point of entry. I love it. So yeah, because a lot of people think, oh chiropractors just, they're gonna crack my back or they're gonna, it's an adjustment by the way, it's not cracking. And so it's really great and refreshing to hear you speak to chiropractic medicine as the holistic approach and to see that that is just the beginning. That's just how you get in. And then we address the body in all different ways. And what I wanna talk about next is the title of our show is Can You Ditch Your EpiPen? And that can raise a lot of fear in a lot of people and in me even personally, because my daughter has a very life-threatening allergy. And if we didn't have the EpiPen, I've spent many nights and days afraid and fearful for her life. So can you talk about that? I mean, we aren't gonna just gonna tell people to go ditch their EpiPen. We're gonna have people maybe look at it in a holistic approach. How's it gonna affect the body, the mind, the spirit? And maybe start talking about the physical part of it. I mean, listen, again, like you just said, don't run out and get rid of your EpiPen or throw your Benadryl away. You know, at least get some dye for your Benadryl. But, you know, medicines have their place, right? I mean, I'm an holistic doctor, but I definitely come from, I try to say as natural as possible, but we understand that those things are helpful in a rescue state, right? But our goal is to say, how can we talk from a physical and even a mental emotional aspect of where these things come from and maybe how we can start dealing with them differently and possibly not necessarily have to use those things all the time, right? So from a physical standpoint, you know, so, you know, some chiropractic is just adjust you and that's what they do. And I will tell you, I've been, you know, I've been chiropractic for over 25 years and I've had plenty of times I've worked with patients and even just the chiropractic adjustment alone has been helpful for things like a seasonal allergy. But, you know, a lot of times we get more into the, what the functional medicine aspect, the holistic medicine piece where we try to heal the body with nutrition and diet and understanding how these processes work. So, you know, there's something in our bodies called mast cells and mast cells create things like histamines and other chemicals and histamines are the things that when we get sick that cause a lot of our symptoms and colds, it also causes a lot of our allergenic responses. You know, when you have, even with asthma's and alien, eczema's and other skin stuff, it's all a lot of is histamine driven. So when we are come from a more natural standpoint, we try to lower the histaminic load on the body if you will. So we use certain supplements that are natural that work with the body to modulate things, not turn them off to help stop the mast cells from, you know, forming and or lowering the level of the chemicals that come from them to naturally lower histamine levels that don't cause people tired and drowsy and have a drug effect and just support immune function both from the gut and above. So that's kind of a bigger approach that we take. I have a question. Are the mast cells always there or do you form them and then you get more? Is there, and then you're more like susceptible to allergies? How's that work? You know, that's a fair question. So in general, mast cells do, you know, they turn over. I mean, we always have them. We need histamines, right? Histamines are how we actually make our stomach acid. We just, and we need them to actually help our body fight things. We just don't, we don't want too much, right? And we don't want them seeing a higher elevated level on a regular basis. And it's not just the mast cells, it's immunoglobulins and everything. And other things too, about how our body's immune system is reacting to things. When it comes to an allergy, as if it was an invading organism and not just something from nature, right? So it's about rebalancing that immune system and getting those levels to be more optimal. You know, unfortunately, we live in a post-COVID world now. And one of the things that we saw with COVID was that people wound up having post-COVID elevated levels of mast cells in their bodies. And that could last, we've seen them elevated for months and years even. So more people susceptible to more colds and allergies too. So it's all about, you know, trying to refine that balance in the immune system. That's really interesting. So with some things, so we've talked about what can cause the histamine response and that there's some supplements and things. What are some, so that's where the EpiPen would come in and maybe diet. And I've almost heard too, because I'm allergic to horses and there was a time I grew up in Colorado, there's plenty of horses there. So we're thinking, oh, well, I really wanted to ride horses. I'm always out in the country and there's shots that you can get, which is like a micro dose of horse histamine. What would that be? A micro dose of horse standard, maybe? I think you're probably talking more about homeopathics or homeopathy. So homeopathy is more, you know, the study where like cures like, if a lot makes you sick, a little makes you better. So in homeopathy, you know, when you kind of do is you give a little bit of something that may irritate someone to help them as well. So there's some things we've used, I've used in the past for allergies, homeopathically. You know, sometimes even traditional medicine has tried to find a almost homeopathic way. You've seen some of these allergist things like that. They try to desensitize you by giving me a little bit of something over and over again. It can sometimes be effective, but just the delivery of all that, I've never been fan of. To me, it's an immune system that's overreacting to something and we need to correct it. And then maybe something just physical and chemical or maybe something more emotional or both. So, you know, while I'm not the emotional practitioner, I work with people in my center that do that work too. So I'll also integrate that as well, but we'll talk a little more my own story with some of that later, but really for me, it's about getting an immune system to do a shop best. And if you think about hunter-gatherers, they wouldn't run around sneezing all spring long, right? Otherwise, you know, they sneak up on a deer and then they go to shoot that bow and arrow and they'd sneeze and the deer run away. They'd all starve to death. They were much more in tune with their environment, but we eat things we shouldn't, we change our food sources, all those things and our immune system changes and we're more reactive to our environment than we should be. So it's about turning that down in the body, whether it's nutrition and diet, supplements, whatever it may be. I've even heard, and this is controversial of course, is that you could even use urine therapy for, yeah, I know. It's not traditional and I wouldn't say it's common, but there's a lot of studies. And if you're adventurous and all alone without an EpiPen, then it might be something that you would consider. I mean, listen, I guess if there was no, I had nothing and I had an anaphylactic reaction where it was so bad that it was either that or die, I guess I would maybe try it all. I don't want that being my last meal necessarily. But again, you know, it's the means we have to excrete them and in the complex that we form with them, get excreted to the urine. So there are some studies out there that you can do things like that. And again, it's somewhat homeopathic, I guess, in the way it works. Okay, okay, moving on, moving on. So let's look at the mental aspect. So I always like to bring Louise L. Hayes into the mix because she's been a great teacher in this journey. And what she says about allergies is that one of the probable causes is to ask yourself, who are you allergic to? And also denying your own power. She also offers something that you can say as well to be able to bring yourself out of those patterns. Like the world is safe and friendly. I am safe, I am at peace with life. That's what she offers for allergies. So, you know, when we first started this show, I said, oh, you know, yeah, that's the affirmation. So when we first started this show, that's what I came to is the fear. And I know that I was afraid for my daughter's life when she would have these attacks with tree nuts. But I was also, I'm sure she was afraid and that's what I was responding to as well. So I think mentally, if we can reaffirm that we are safe and the world is friendly and everything, that's that mental aspect, right? That we can also address. Well, definitely in having the positive outlook to it, right? If you're subconscious believes that anytime I'm exposed to XYZ, I'm gonna have an anaphylactic reaction that might die. Well, you know, you might have an anaphylactic reaction and die regardless, right? So, you know, our subconscious and our emotions drive so many things. And there's a technique. One of the few techniques we use here some of our practitioners do is something called Psyche K. I don't know if you know who Bruce Lipton is, but Bruce Lipton is very big in this world of, you know, subconscious beliefs and all those things, but he's a very big component of it. And it's a very simple technique once you mastered it. And basically it's very simply put, it's finding, using muscle testing to find negative beliefs in the subconscious and energy work to balance it. So if we get to a little more of that, the spiritual metaphysical side, you know, it's what's holding that thing in. Like I had a 19 year nut alley. So I couldn't eat hazelnuts, almonds or cashews without an allergic response. Now for me, that wasn't anaphylaxis. My ears would get itchy in the back of my throat. We get itchy and scratchy. My uvula would swell up in my, my lips would get a little bit irritated and swollen at times. And, you know, I wasn't gonna figure out a, you know, wait, you know, keep eating hazelnuts just to make sure I had an anaphylactic reaction one day. But, you know, I avoided them, but it's not like I didn't have exposures. A few times a year I'd always get exposed to something and go, oh, I bet there was almonds in that. And you'd ask and go, oh yeah. And they're like, well, there's my reason. So one of the, we actually host training for this technique here. And then the instructor was in town, this is five years ago now. I had her, she did some work with me and actually cleared my allergy. Took like 10 minutes. You know, for me it was something to do with some forgiveness work around my dad. And once we had done that, I said, all right, let's try it. I ate a cashew, nothing happened. I waited a few more minutes. I'm gonna try another cashew, nothing. I'm like, that's kind of cool. I think part of my brain was a little like, you know, skeptical still. So that night I was here doing some paperwork by myself and I was hungry. I went in the back and I'm like, grew it. I ate a handful of hazelnuts. I'm not gonna find out the smartest move because by myself at 10 o'clock at night and nothing. And it's been five years and still nothing. You know, I've had them, I eat them no problem. And just for me, that allergy was gone because something emotional helped it in, right? And sometimes with this technique you, I don't have to get too far down the rabbit hole. You try to do some detective work. See like when did it first start? And it was nothing really retired to that moment. So we just did some other work to find it. But you know, the instructor would tell the story about someone she worked on that had seasonal allergies. And it turned out he was like five years old. They were in the car and the windows were down. It was, you know, pollen spring and they had a car accident. And the trauma of that accident with the pollen exposure kind of linked those two together for him when they cleared that, no longer an issue with, you know, pollen. She even tells the story about someone who had a banana like an anaphylactic issue for that banana and they were eating bananas no problem. So I'm not saying do this and you can go eat peanuts if you're gonna die from a peanut eating, but at the very least if you maybe could take that load down like after you get an exposure, maybe you don't need it. I'm not saying don't use it, but saying one never knows. Things can change. And I mean, and that's also that radical trust, right? I want to hear more about the rabbit hole. How did you find, how did you find your emotions in such forgiveness issue with your dad? So, you know, she went back and, because this technique has different levels to it and there's a health and well-being where they actually are trained as an MD out of Sweden that actually trains a specific thing with them. It's all about finding the emotional causes of disease. It's actually really cool. And so she was using some of that and it was like, hey, when was the first, when you first had that hazelnut allergy, what happened? And I mean, I was at, I was on a blind date eating hazelnuts at a really nice Italian restaurant. And all of a sudden I'm like, why is it back in my throat? My usual touching my tongue. You know, and it was like trying to figure out and she muscle tests and no, nothing would show up, you know, as the issue. And she goes, okay, is it something around the mother? No, it's not around the father. Yes. Then it was like doing some other detective work there to say, all right, it's about forgiveness work with your dad. And then you do some pieces of the, you know, the technique where it tells you how to kind of, you know, clear that and you know, you do the work, you sit into the energy and I've, you know, this I've been doing this kinds of things with, you know, for a long time. So it's maybe easier for me than someone else, but pretty cool. And I've had a lot of patients go through the training or even just get worked on with it, with some pretty, pretty radical shift for things from a physical standpoint or an emotional standpoint. And just one of those, at the end of the day, what does it mean, right? It means that you don't realize how much your emotions drive or hold things in for you. I had a real reaction. I had a real physical chemical response to something, but something was causing that subconsciously to be held there. So, and for some people that may be more esoteric, I don't think that's necessarily the case for your viewers. But, you know, sometimes it's not the easiest thing to explain to people, but, you know, when you come from a more sciencey place and you talk about it, I was, well, people listen a little bit differently than I when I talk about it in my practice. I mean, I'm big on finding what the emotional cause is for things, and I feel like there's a lot of ways when you clear those emotions, then the rest of your being has that freedom to be able to not be enslaved by those experiences anymore, right? Those occasions, those incidents, the triggers that will just get you and you don't even know. So I had a really terrible reaction when I was young to horses. And yeah, my throat, I looked really, yeah, I wasn't even recognizable as a human child. And I mean, I don't remember anything, and I was looking at like, ah, was I like allergic to somebody? Was I denying my own power at like seven or six? Like, I don't know, you know what I mean? I don't think so. I think I felt safe and everything. So I guess there's something else that I would love to hear more about that therapy. Because there's so many things from a subconscious standpoint, right? So, you know, we do hypnosis here. We do the psyche. We have other techniques and it comes down to, you know, our subconscious is recording everything and our subconscious is telling us stories, whether we understand or not. And our perspective is always shaped by our experience and vice versa. So who know? Right? There could have been one incident that happened that day that triggered something from when you were five that maybe someone had said to you and then all of a sudden boom and then now it anchored in with this other thing. You know what? That is a really good point because there were a lot of traumas in my early childhood. And I didn't feel safe. And this just came up like two weeks ago when I was doing a different therapy that I'll talk about on another show. But yeah, it came up and I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel safe at all. And that's interesting. And so it could just have been like that perfect storm is what I call it of when and dagnabbit horses are supposed to be like the most spiritually in tune animals or something on the planet too. So I always wanted to be able to be with them. Not really the horses fall. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Why can't I connect? At the end of the day, the cool thing about the subconscious is you don't have to know critically consciously. Your subconscious always knows. You just need to train. A good practitioner doing certain techniques to get to the room, right? And listen, there are other techniques and we talked earlier about you and I off before the show about NEET, which a lot of times it's done by acupuncturists but it's another technique where they try to go after an allergy and they do certain points on the body and they always make a whole stuff and then they basically avoid that allergy for 25 hours or whatever. And sometimes it does clear and I don't do NEET but I work with some number of practitioners that do. So I can refer to them too. There's a lot of ways to skin the old pet. In my center, I have so many practitioners I can just send them to whoever I feel might be the best fit. And then for myself, I try to teach them, well, she has some supplements to support it and then how can we go after balancing the immune system? So it's kind of our big thing there. Yeah, so let's talk too about, so we've got the NAT, the acupuncture. The emotional, the mental, the physical. Is there any particular incident that you can talk about that's really influenced you about allergies or something that has really just blown your mind about one of your no names, of course, but one of your clients or friends or family members? Well, like I said, the thing for me with the nuts was pretty mind blowing. We do belief work all the time, right? If in this world that you and I live in, but I can do work around a money belief and then when no one just backs up a brink's truck to my door and just dumps cash out. It's not usually how it works, right? But with the allergy thing, the fact that we did this work and I was able to literally just eat that food and not have a problem was pretty mind blowing to me. I think it's when you can see it like that. And I've had some patients who have physical issues with that too. That's one of those cool things. Even earlier on when I still has my seasonal allergies just from getting an adjustment would get better. I need to do some more psych care so they run my seasonal allergies. But for me, it's really diet and nutrition. If I avoid certain foods and I take my supplements, I don't have allergies or very minimal. I have really severe seasonal allergies and I should never keep saying that to myself because it just feeds my subconscious more BS. But because I don't eat gluten-dairy soy corn, especially this time of year and I take the supplements that I use, I have minimal response. And if I do, it's short-lived and not like I used to, you know, so. Right, because there are certain foods that are inflammatory. And if your allergic responses are an inflammatory, immuno response, then that would make perfect sense that it's contributing to it. Right, from a chemical standpoint, inflammation is at the root of all disease, right? So the less the more you lower inflammation in your body, both from your food sources, your external toxic levels, make sure your liver is like, there's so many pieces to it. There's not always one answer, right? But I think sometimes getting to the emotional root could be a really big one for a lot of people. It could be faster sometimes if you can get to the cause really quick. But yeah, otherwise lifestyle shift, the getting back to what we are and what we're supposed to be and away from all those things. You know, I think about a load of toxic crap that's been loaded into us from day one, right? Right, on all levels, not just what we eat, but what we ingest in our environment, yeah. Correct. Yeah, so and I mean, and there's like a short-term and a long-term, right? So the short-term would be the EpiPen or the Benadryl if that's how you choose to go. And then, you know, or the rescue response, right? Right. And then the long-term would be, okay, let's take a look at what creates inflammation in ours. I have seasonal allergies also. And sometimes I'll just be like, oh, I can feel that coming on. And I'll just maybe take a day or two of a kerosene bromelain mix or something like that. And once it gets in my system, I'm like, oh, I feel better. And I don't have to use it every day or anything, so. Yeah, I mean, when it comes again, the EpiPen, Benadryl, to me, those are like worst case scenario, right? And if you're someone who has these life-threatening allergies, you know, you can do all this other work around it, but I would still hold onto the EpiPen, right? Because you never know, right? Like you could do the work like I do, it's like, hey, maybe it is gone, but maybe it's not. You know, I would never say, oh, you die if you eat a peanut. So let's do this technique and now eat a peanut, right? You know, if someone decided on their own to try that one day, I would tell them, don't do it without Benadryl or a freaking EpiPen around, because God forbid you had the response and it didn't clear or whatever, or there's more to it than just the emotional piece. You better have that other thing around. So I'm not advocating for those things, but that's what I'm just saying. Like if, you know, people like, well, I don't want, yeah, I would, again, I tell my patients too, like if you want to use this technique and try to go after a specific allergy that you know you're anaphylactic to where you could die, I'm not like, oh, dude, I'm just gonna have your fine. Just eat, you know, peanuts, it'll be good. Yeah, that makes my heart palpitate a little bit. Right, right. There's a level of fear, but then, you know, the hope is that at the very least you can look underneath and say, you know what, I did this technique, maybe if I got an exposure one day, I may not need the epi-pen. It doesn't mean you hold out and like, I think I'm gonna make it, you know? Right. If you got an exposure and didn't know it and didn't have a response, wouldn't that be cool to find out later? Oh, you know what, there was peanuts in that. And they're like, oh crap, I didn't die. You know what I mean? And you had the epi-pen, God, I think you needed it. Right. So let's just, so you said it was Psy-K, PSY-CH-K. PSY-CH-K. PSY-K. Yeah, and you know, the one one we work with, if you want to check out our website is, instead of inter, it's inneractivebeliefs.com. So INNER Beliefs.com, activebeliefs.com. So yeah, we actually host those trainings here a few times a year. So we actually have one coming up in June, if anyone wants to travel to, or lives in New York, I don't know where all your people are watching from, but if you want to come, it's in June. Right. So let's do a little Psy-Trip to go and do it. You should. Absolutely. You should fly all the way from Hawaii. Maybe we'll have you in Hawaii and you can host one here in Hawaii sometime. I wouldn't do that. I'm sure she would do that. Robin, the woman is our instructor, but. Beautiful. Yeah, I visit one day anyway, but I won't have any allergies either there. Oh no, there's plenty. We have lots of allergies here. And it's a real thing. A lot of things bloom and blow in the air here. And you couldn't even recognize it until you're like, oh shucks, that's happening. But thank you so much for coming on today, Jason. My pleasure, thank you so much. Yes, just really enjoyed having you and all of your wealth of knowledge and wisdom and sharing your personal experiences as well as always a bonus on this show to be able to let people know that they're not alone and share our ways to be able to, you know, find holistic approaches to their wellbeing. So I also wanna thank Think Tech Hawaii for providing a place for us to be able to have these conversations and all of our donors and sponsors for helping to keep us on the air. And just remember you are the answer that you need in order to be able to keep yourself healthy and hope. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.