Why You Have Allergies and a Stuffy Nose...and How Acupuncture Can Help

If you're one of those people like me that is very prone to having a stuffy nose all the time for no apparent reason, right, you're not sick, you don't have a sinus headache, sometimes you even eat something and then you get an acute stuffy nose, it can be very difficult to parse out why that's actually happening and what the real reason is for it happening. So in this video I thought I would talk about this very common symptom that I see and had experienced myself for years as well as some practical ways that I Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day on Amazon and doctor of Chinese medicine. Now before we jump to this video there are two very important links right below the video itself. One is for a free guide which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. The other is to reach me to become a patient in my private practice or online via telemedicine. There's a link below for my clinic and my personal office. So let's begin with why they happen, right. Chinese medicine is all about patterns. We're looking at patterns in the body. If you just chase the symptom of a stuffy nose you'll be going crazy your whole life trying to understand what the reason is for it. Especially because they come and go, they're chronic and they're not often linked to just one thing and they appear in certain people more than others. Those criteria make it very difficult to really understand these symptoms because they are often constitutional in nature. So what I see clinically undeniably is that stuffy noses are associated with a few other things. The first is that they are almost always associated with someone with impaired or weak digestive function. It is almost always either someone who comes in for digestive problems that also has chronic stuffy noses or someone who has chronic stuffy noses that I then asked about their digestive health and they report yeah they have problems with their stomach or with reflux or with their bowel movements or food sensitivities. So the first is to know that this symptom in Chinese medicine is for sure linked often to digestive processes and I find that clinically treating that will clearly produces a change in those symptoms and it's almost one-to-one. Another secondary symptom that's very very common is one not only issues with the stomach, indigestion, reflux, always clearing the throat, the stuffy nose and the third trifecta is digestive headaches. So these people often are prone to getting that frontal, people call it brain fog, people call it feeling like there's cotton balls in your head, people just say I eat something and the next day I've just got like like sensations in the front of my head or all around my head. That's very very common to hear clinically. Beyond that the reason for this is I was reading this book by a Japanese physician who practiced Chinese medicine, his name was Otsuka and Otsuka was a physician who ended up practicing with Chinese herbs, formulas because he found them to be so effective and he ended up leaving his physician's practice, his MD to practice with Chinese formulas and one of the things the Japanese physicians call stuffy nose, headaches, even nausea is they call it toxic water or counterflow water. Now that sounds pseudoscientific until you understand how we understand these problems in Chinese medicine. People who are prone to this pattern are prone to issues with their gastric mucosa. So these are people who are prone to excess dampness what we call in Chinese medicine which is they're kind of a phlegmy constitution often. They often have phlegm in their throat, they often have post nasal drip, they often have self-reported digestive problems, some of them are often the more anxious or more sensitive more cold constitution and so this pattern has been observed for thousands of years. I mean this is not not new but it's interesting that these Japanese physicians called it counterflow water or toxic water. What that means is that the impairment in digestive function is essentially causing a reflux like pattern where you also see it extended to you know phlegmy throat, stuffy nose and this digestive headache. And I find that by treating the digestive process the physiology around your digestion, the stuffy nose can go away, the frontal headaches, digestive headaches can go away and these symptoms can really really improve. So I thought that was interesting and thought I would share it with you. Now let's talk about what I see are the two most common types very generalized that are the most susceptible to allergies. We're talking about seasonal We'll talk about that later but in regard to seasonal allergies the two types we often talk about are the more damp type the more dry type. Remember this is revisiting yin and yang in clinical medicine. People almost always fall on one side of the spectrum or they're a mixed pattern in between. Now on the damp type is exactly what I just described. These people are prone to what we consider dampness, bloating, food sensitivities, mucus in the throat. They're kind of phlegmy, right? They usually run more on the cold side and these types are prone to basically an exacerbation of that where when they get their allergies the stuffy nose comes back, frontal symptoms, potentially even sinus infections, etc. So that type, the spleen chi deficient type is very prone to these kinds of seasonal allergies just as a general observation. The second type is what we call the blood deficient type. These people are more prone to skin conditions like rashes, eczema, hives and interestingly they come and go. So they sweat really hard, their skin itches or their skin gets red raised or they get weepy eczema and weepy rashes or if there's stress coming up in their life. Sometimes that happens too. So this dry type, what we call the blood deficient type, they often have this is not so easy to translate into plain English but this type will often be prone to these kind of problems as well but it may be a little bit different in the way that it presents itself. So the clinical strategies that I employ treating these with formulas is really we either work on healing digestive processes or we work on more of what Chinese medicine considers the blood which sometimes overlaps with hormones, which sometimes overlaps with anemia, which sometimes overlaps with just general endocrinology, endocrine function. And when we work on those two things the next time the allergy or spring season comes around or fall that's less of a problem. So chronic allergies, chronic stuffy nose, these are some of the main patterns I see clinically. I've experienced them for years myself and I found formulas to be really really effective for them. Again you guys if you want to stay in touch right below this video are two important links. The first is if you'd like to see me in my private clinical practice. The info below is for my office and clinic. There's also a free guide for you that will also link you to my weekly video newsletter on self-healing and that is right below the first link in the description. All right and before you go I have two related videos for you right there.