Allison Samon shares her healing journey from chronic pain and autoimmune issues to functional medicine solutions, emphasizing diet’s crucial role in recovery.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justinhealth. com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio. Really excited for today's guest, Allison Sabin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Allison's website is chronicillnessrelief. com. Allison sees lots of Patients from all over the country dealing with autoimmune and chronic gut and mystery illnesses. We're going to have a nice podcast discussion on that topic today. Allison, how you doing?
Allison Samon: Hey, I'm so great. So happy to be here with you.
Allison Samon: Big fan of this show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Oh, awesome. Excited that you are a part of it. That's great. First off, I've always liked to understand how practitioners get to where they're at. Usually there's this kind of healing journey where they had some kind of a health issue or a challenge and that challenge inspired them to go to a higher level, usually you knock on the door of conventional medicine and you're like, all right this many drugs and symptom treatment, you're not really getting to the underlying issue. How did that journey unfold for you? That's how it unfolded for me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: But what about you?
Allison Samon: Same. That was exact. That was my story. Exactly. I. kind of always thought of myself as a health and fitness enthusiast, but I really didn't know what the heck I was doing or talking about. And it really came to a head when I began having chronic pain and I, it started in my knees. I did have an injury.
Allison Samon: This was in college. I had a skiing accident where my ski went one way, my knee went the other. So ouch. Yeah, you know the difference though, between an ouchie and something's wrong. And so I think that was like an initial tear, but then I healed because I was young and you just, Heal from things.
Allison Samon: But then that summer I ran a race in the morning and I waitress that night. And when I woke up from my nap after the race, I was limping and I was like, Oh, okay. I probably twisted something while I was running, taking a rest, made it swell. But a couple of weeks later, I'm still limping around and I go to the doctor and.
Allison Samon: What I was told, and this became a theme for several years, you're young, you're athletic, you're fine. And I'm like, I think this is fine. I D this doesn't feel fine. And so that's just where it began was in my knees. But then it started to be in my lower back where I couldn't sit. Very comfortably. I was always just what's wrong with this chair and blaming everything.
Allison Samon: I was getting into that place of blame and just misery. And then my butt. So I couldn't, so sitting was uncomfortable and physically sitting was uncomfortable. So like chairs were uncomfortable. And also just the act of sitting was uncomfortable. I had this like dull ache in, in my butt. And so a neurologist chiropractors, physical therapists did everything everybody said.
Allison Samon: Nothing was helping. I had neuropathy in my feet. Like it just kept manifesting into something else. Migraines hormonal imbalances. And nobody ever talked to me about anything that actually was going to move the needle. I thought that they were. And then finally I met somebody who asked me about what I was eating.
Allison Samon: And I was like, why? Like, why are you asking that? Of course I eat healthy. And. The mentality, my mentality at that time was if you're not fat, you're healthy. We're getting it. I'm I didn't think that I was constipated. I thought it was okay that you only go like once every Two or three days because you're busy.
Allison Samon: I worked in television at the time. I didn't want to go that work. Who does that? And I don't want anybody else dating to know that I went to the bathroom. That's crazy. So I was fine with it. I didn't realize how toxic I was. And that was showing up in all of my symptoms, the fatigue and the mood.
Allison Samon: And so I finally was like this, Oh, that how I was eating or not eating was actually impacting how my body felt. And when I went home from, so it was an alternative practitioner. Basically he was was doing muscle reactivation and he was the first person to ask me about my diet and to consider what if you don't drink orange juice?
Allison Samon: I hated orange juice. I was only doing it. It was healthy. What if you don't drink orange juice and have an orange instead or have strawberries or broccoli for the vitamin C, not orange juice. And I was like, Oh, okay. Crazy man. And the next day my knee didn't hurt. And I'm not saying that the solution to that, to all of my problems, but it was the first step in the first like light.
Allison Samon: That I saw was, wow. What other
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: foods were you pulling out? Was it just oranges? Because that seems yeah, there's a lot of sugar there, but what else?
Allison Samon: Orange juice. So orange juice that came out. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So a lot of sugar, right? There's, you got the sugar of eight oranges and one cup of orange juice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So there's a lot of sugar there. So that makes sense. What else?
Allison Samon: And I was having that with special K.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So gluten. Yeah. A lot of gluten.
Allison Samon: And this was the fat free. Everything was fat free. And so if they don't have fat in something, what is it going to have? Sugar, more
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: carbs, typically
Allison Samon: more carbs, more sugar to give it flavor.
Allison Samon: And I, so I worked in television and I don't drink coffee. I don't drink soda. Don't smoke cigarettes. That's what everybody does to have the energy to sustain. I didn't do any of that stuff. So what did I need for my energy? And that was my drug of choice that I gave me energy, false energy, temporary bursts of energy.
Allison Samon: And also, when you work really long hours, you miss out on some social things. Plus my body was starting to fall apart. So I was missing out on even more. And I was also self medicating with sugar because it made me happy. of happiness, right? And so there was a lot of, I'm a junkie. This is what I like to say.
Allison Samon: I'm a reformed junkie. And I didn't realize just how much I was eating and how addicted to it. I was thinking that if I had these lean cuisines and I had these, healthy fast food, I could eat these fat free low calorie things. Not really realizing I wasn't giving myself nutrients. And it was in all of the ways that my body was so you're
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: consuming a lot of food allergens, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: A lot of extra sugar. And then it was that just keeping your body more inflamed. So then this injury that happened while skiing was just really, yeah, it was something. But. With the inflammation being in the background, it made you more susceptible to experience all the pain. Is that what you're saying?
Allison Samon: I would think so. I would think so. Obviously, I can't go back. Yeah. Because nobody, at the time. But yes, that is my theory. Is that I would have had the ability to repair and recover if I wasn't fueling this fire of inflammation. Every day. All day for years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So then you made some of these diet changes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: You started to feel better. And how did you start incorporating other autoimmune components, gut stuff, hormone stuff, how did that come into the mix? Was this like kind of the first peek under the tent and you're like how much better can I get? And you look deeper. How did that unfold?
Allison Samon: Yeah, it's like that.
Allison Samon: I became addicted to what else can I do? What else can I, what else is
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: there?
Allison Samon: Yeah. And so I started to just really become obsessed with this crazy newfangled concept called nutrition that I feel like nobody knows about. How come nobody knows about this? Nobody's talking about it. And so your listeners probably are like, wow, I just never thought of that either.
Allison Samon: It just was so revelatory to me. And so I started trying new foods. I literally had to look things up. I subscribed to a farm box and I was like, what is this? A Romanesco cauliflower. And I was like, I don't even know what this is or what to do with it. So I had to learn. I just became a really good student and I was still working in television at the time.
Allison Samon: And people would ask me like, how come you have so much energy and you're not doing what they're doing? How come you? Are not like with your head on the table. And I wasn't eating the food that they were eating. And so I was becoming like the unofficial health coach on the sets that I worked on.
Allison Samon: And then I was like, I wonder if I'm supposed to be doing something else and then, the economy crashes and my shows start getting canceled and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go back to school. And so I went back to school for nutrition and I was just my first like patient zero and everything, every different diet, every different theory just to see what can my body do?
Allison Samon: One of the things that I know you work a lot with hormone health and one of the things. That was an issue for me that I didn't think was an issue for me or not in the way that it was presented to me. I was on the pill, so I didn't get my period when I was in my early twenties, like late teens, early twenties.
Allison Samon: I just wasn't getting it. That's concerning. Yeah. And My, so I went on the pill and I was secretly happy about that because Hey, bonus, I won't get pregnant when I don't want to be. And so what I didn't realize is that I shouldn't be on it for so long. And that it was just masking an underlying issue.
Allison Samon: And I had asked my doctor somewhere in my mid twenties should I still be on this? And he's your body's going to do what your body's always going to do. And he's only half right there. So as long as you keep, Doing what you have always done. Body's going to keep doing what it's always done.
Allison Samon: And so it wasn't until I was in nutrition school and I was still on the pill. And I'm like, I'm in my thirties now. I would like to have a baby not today, but I want to make sure that I can. So I think I should have the pill and I did now. During this time, I've already been working on myself, changing my diet, working on my gut health, pooping once a day,
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: not
Allison Samon: having the fatigue, all of this stuff.
Allison Samon: So I went on the pill, and it was like, 28 days later, I got my period. And, but I had, before that, I had ovulated for the first time in over a decade. The first time I knew that I ovulated because I felt it and I was, I, sweating and like writhing in pain. And apparently that's textbook for the, like coming off the pill, having this excruciating pain.
Allison Samon: And I've been regular ever since. And I was like, ain't that something, right? They told me when I was 26 that it was always gonna be like this. And at, whatever it was, 34 it was normal. I was like, back to normal, not having any trouble anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Dr. Justin Marchegiani That's good. Yeah, when you take lots of synthetic estrogens for decades, it can predispose you to fibroids and endometriosis.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: You're putting a lot of synthetic estrogen in your body. Now, when you were doing that, were you still taking the reminder pills at the end so you still have a period?
Allison Samon: Yeah, I thought I was having a period.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Yeah. Yeah, at least fleshing out the endometrial lining. So then you didn't have any post birth control syndrome symptoms afterwards.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: You got back on healthy mood, healthy energy, healthy libido.
Allison Samon: Yeah, fortunately that was all fine. And then I turned, so then I'm in school for a few years and then I'm, I shipped, I changed careers and I started on nutrition practice and then I was like, Oh, Hey, I'm 40. Like how that happened and we forgot to have a baby, like you have to do this and I had been working on myself and because when I was cool, anybody who was in my family, so hubby, hello, we're going to experiment on you too.
Allison Samon: And we ended up getting pregnant within three months of trying and, and that's at 40. So I was like, Hey, this works, this stuff works. And of course I didn't know that it was going to work out so well, but I do know that if I had tried to get pregnant in my twenties, it would not have worked because I know how sick I was then.
Allison Samon: And I know that I felt younger, like the older I get, I don't feel older. I feel I definitely, because I identified with an 85 year old when I was 25, because I couldn't walk up and down stairs. My colleagues had to carry me and I was in New York City and yeah, I was in so much pain.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So yeah, the fertility.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So yeah, the fertility challenge and just getting off the pill, was that enough for you to be able to. Gain your fertility back. Did you have to use any bioidenticals ready her role supporters, or anything nutrient wise, outside of the box there? Dr. Monteith Miller.
Allison Samon: I didn't, I just, I was really mindful of making sure that I was bringing in let's see.
Allison Samon: B vitamins. I was bringing in lots of green, like just anybody who knew me before would never believe that this is how I ate, but a lot of whole foods rather than I used to subsist on a lot of package and process foods. And it was like, it was whole foods. I did bring in evening primrose oil. Like I was trying to like support progesterone because I know that, these things, they do decline, like facts of life.
Allison Samon: They do, but they don't have to at the rates that they At which they do for a lot of women because we're not paying attention and we're not looking at the signs and we're not feeding us things that are going to help to support and modulate our hormones. Dr. Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Marchegiani okay. So you have this journey, you have this fertility journey, so you get pregnant.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: How many kids do you have? You have one child too?
Allison Samon: I have one. I have one. Working on number two, but yes, one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Great. Awesome. That's cool. And so then, based on your journey and where you're at, who are the patients that you typically attract? Are you attracting a lot of women with hormonal related issues or are you seeing a lot more chronic type of illness or with an autoimmune gut component?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: How does that match? Dr. Marni Cisneros Yeah. I do see a lot of. I think when I was documenting my pregnancy, it was a lot of those women were coming, but my, it's usually the people who have been struggling. We call them big, bigs. So people who have big struggle and they put big effort toward finding resolution to toward healing for a long period of time.
Allison Samon: And they're just not getting answers. And so those tend to be the people that I attract because I relate so much to that chronic health struggle. And it's so funny because most people will assume, probably for you too, that you've always been this way. You've always been so healthy. And you've always, and that wasn't the case for me at all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: I think it's very easy for someone to see and look at someone who's not like obese and just assume, okay, they're there. They must be healthy. They must feel great. And there's a lot of people that look healthy, but on the inside, they're dying. They don't feel that good. They don't feel energized or their mood or their irritability, or they have hormonal rhythms that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: make them feel incredibly unstable or cognitively they can't focus. That's a big thing. And it's like, how do you feel on the inside? That's really the key thing. And I imagine you noticed a big shift once you started making these changes, probably one of the big first symptoms you noticed outside of just the overall inflammation in your body dropping.
Allison Samon: 100%. And, but one of the driving factors and this sort of takes a sad turn in our conversation is that one of the, one of the pain points that I had and driving forces for what I do now and making this shift was that my dad who looked a hot, the healthiest, most muscular was active and happy and vibrant and all of the things, non smoker, non drinker, he died at 50 years old.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Oh, wow. That's really young. So you must've been what at the time of 20?
Allison Samon: I was in my early twenties. So
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: he,
Allison Samon: yep, I was young and it blew us all away because there was not expected. There were no signs he wasn't sick or at least he never complained of anything. And so it speaks exactly to your point is that people can look perfect on the outside, which did, he was dying on the inside.
Allison Samon: We had no idea he had severe heart disease blockages that nobody looked for because He was so athletic and the assumption was he doesn't need to do a stress test because even though he turned 50 cholesterol was good. Colonoscopy was good. And his doctor said, you don't need a stress test. You do one every day, not close up to monitors.
Allison Samon: What
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: was his diet like? Was eating just like a, a lot of the typical food pyramid, lots of gluten, lots of processed stuff.
Allison Samon: Yes. Yes. And also fat free.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Ah. That's a big one. Because if you're not eating fat, you're eating a bunch of processed carbs. And then also, you need healthy fats to run your hormonal system, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Yeah. It's a big one.
Allison Samon: And whenever I see, and this is, a drum that I'm always sounding because I didn't know it. We just didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I was leading the charge for fat free. It made so much sense. That's what everybody was saying. That
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: was the 90s, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: 80s and 90s. That was a big thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Allison Samon: Yes. And so when you don't have fat in your diet and you have heart disease, your liver is going to make more cholesterol, you're going to have more plaque because your liver is actually unsupported. It's your liver that needs that. And so whenever people are like, I have high cholesterol, I'm like, don't look at your heart.
Allison Samon: Let's look at your liver. Let's address that. Because he probably had fatty liver disease.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Yep.
Allison Samon: He definitely had heart disease. Yep. And he was not detoxifying properly. I just like looking back, it was a standard American diet. It wasn't that it was like McDonald's all the time, but there wasn't a lot of veggies.
Allison Samon: There wasn't very much fat except for the chocolate ice cream that he would have at night. But starting a day with bagel and coffee.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And when you're surging insulin, if you're not eating a bunch of fat, then you're eating a lot more carbohydrates that are processed. It sounds like your history, there's probably a lot of gluten sensitivity there, so he's probably eating a lot of gluten.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And when you're surging insulin, he's exercising, it's healthy, but when you're surging insulin, it's very inflammatory on the vasculature. That makes sense.
Allison Samon: Yeah, now it does.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Yeah, oh yeah, I know hindsight's 20 20, I know, I get it.
Allison Samon: Yeah, and so that's a big, that's really important to me, is that yeah, of course we all want to look good, but we also have to make sure that it's, we're good, we're healthy on the inside.
Allison Samon: And it doesn't always manifest as, fat in other people, you can be perfectly lean, but also have all of these other symptoms that we might poo because well, everybody has fatigue or everybody has brain fog or everybody has a little joint. I'm getting old. That's why my knees hurt. And it's no, they don't have to,
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: they
Allison Samon: don't have to.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So you have your dad's past. So then let's talk about the autoimmune components, right? And the gut health component. How did that kind of become an instrumental thing for you to look at or for you to dive down? Was that something that you had a personal experience with? Or were you just dealing with a lot of people that had a lot of chronic gut issues and you had to dive in deeper to figure out what was happening?
Allison Samon: Yeah, that. Yes, you're good. Yeah, that's exactly how it happened because I was in school and starting to see patients and working with more and more people. And oftentimes when, so I fortunately did not have any autoimmune. We thought so. When I was going through all of my struggles I did have Raynaud's, so my fingers would turn white whenever I was exposed.
Allison Samon: Dr. Justin Marchegiani So I did have that. Any
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Hashimoto's with that? Usually that's associated with Hashimoto's. I didn't.
Allison Samon: No, I didn't. But they were wondering about lupus, like all because I had so much pain. However, it was the diet and lifestyle that moved the needle the most for me. I was toxic. I just, I wasn't, I was toxic.
Allison Samon: I was nutrient deficient and toxic. So what I find is that a lot of, My clients with these mystery symptoms or chronic illness, there's always autoimmune if not a diagnosis that they have, it's in their health history, it's their mom, their grandma. So even if undiagnosed and I'm like, and I have had to, and I'm not a doctor, but I know how to read labs and I will look at things and say, Hey, you may want to ask them about this because anybody's off the charts.
Allison Samon: And so I've had this couple of times where I've diagnosed. Hashimoto's, but I have to like, refer them back to say this is concerning. Go ask. And then one of my clients said, Oh yeah, we know, but she was already on thyroid meds. So they never talked to her about it. Because once you have one autoimmune, you're going to have three.
Allison Samon: So let's do it instead of just giving her thyroid meds and she's fine. That's it. That's not it. She's clearly not happy because she's sitting in front of me, right? Her body doesn't feel happy. Her life doesn't feel happy. And that's where I fill the gap functional as a functional nutritionist, filling the gap between like, Where the doctor is and like where the patient or client is okay, now what do I do?
Allison Samon: How do I even make this work and what I'm so overwhelmed and am I doomed and like usually no Usually the answer is no, you're not doomed, right? there's things that we can do to be proactive and reverse if not Just mitigate all of these symptoms and give you tools So that if and when symptoms come up, you know what to do and like flares would be fewer and farther between Dr.
Allison Samon: Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Marchegiani Yeah, I think people make an assumption that if my medical doctor did not tell me about this, then it must not be something important. Most people don't realize that your average medical doctor has virtually zero education and nutrition at all in their curriculum. And if there's any connection to nutrition, it has to do with a disease state, like vitamin C and scurvy or B1 and beriberi, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: It has to do with more or pathology versus like function or functional medicine, right? Functional physiology, if you will. People make that assumption. And then, you look at let's say you go into the dietitian world, if you ever go to a dietitian seminar you're going to see Kellogg's and General Mills and Mars Corporation, they sponsor these events.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And the whole idea is balance and moderation, so we can still promote dietitians to pitch our junkie processed food if it's only a little bit, right? And yeah, I get that. And people really they don't know who to get advice from. And it's stuck.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: People are stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I think practitioners like myself and yourself, they come across on YouTube or podcast and they're talking a different story.
Allison Samon: Yeah, and that's what I think attracted me to functional medicine. I was in nutrition school and I learned about IFM, Institute for Functional Medicine and just, it was a new, it was an emerging concept of like patient centered healthcare and how there's like bio individual approach and I was like, ain't that something?
Allison Samon: How come no, because they were trying to fit me. I had no diagnosis. I wanted one, because I didn't know what was wrong with it. For 10 years, I struggled with unexplained chronic pain. I had 7 MRIs, I told you, I did, I saw all of the thing, all of the people, all of the top docs, the orthopedic surgeons, and it wasn't until they recommended exploratory surgery on my knee, because it, my tear.
Allison Samon: Was it meniscus?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Was it meniscus or?
Allison Samon: Yeah, I had meniscus tear. And so I had one doctor say we should cut it. And I said or we should do surgery. And I said, what do you do? Aren't you just cutting out the frayed part? They said, yeah. And I said if there's less, isn't it going to just tear again?
Allison Samon: Cause I hear that most people go for like multiple knee surgeries. He said yeah. And I was like, okay. And so one of the doctors said, because I went for two opinions, and one of them said, or, and I was like, or? He's you can strengthen the muscles around your knee and try to support it. I'm like, that sounds like a better idea.
Allison Samon: The, because I, when I didn't have, I had all these different things wrong. And in, in Western medicine, we segment the body into you. So I'm having migraines. So go to a neurologist. I'm having this like numbness. Go to a neurologist. I'm having knee pain. Go to a orthopedist. Go to a physical therapist.
Allison Samon: Like it's all different. I never had anybody talking about digestion, which is where everything is coming from. At least that's in functional medicine. We know this to be true. It's the, it's where your immune system is. It's where all of the information that you feed your body disseminates that information throughout your body.
Allison Samon: I was learning about functional medicine. I'm like, this would have saved me 10 years. of pain and struggle and money had I known that I, my diet was crap and I needed to make changes and I needed to sleep because I wasn't sleeping. All of these like basic simple things and I think maybe specialists I think that those are two like, Oh those, like we, it's more complicated stuff.
Allison Samon: And I they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And meanwhile, it was all of these basic fundamentals of health that I did not have in place at all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: The issue with diagnoses in general, if you look at most diagnoses, they don't really connect to a root underlying issue. A lot of times they just give you a.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: For instance, if you came in with a joint issue they may just say, hey, you have arthritis. It's that literally just means joint. Arthro means joint. Itis means inflammation. It's ah, no crap. I have inflammation there. That's the pain, right? Or they may say, oh, it's meniscus. But then, what's the treatment, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Does the diagnosis get you to a treatment that addresses the root cause or is it a treatment that is managing symptoms as you slowly decline? Most conventional medicine diagnoses are about managing symptoms as you slowly decline and then we know what happens with decline. You need either more, stronger drugs or higher dose as you decline and usually then you deal with side effects of the drugs as you're managing the decline.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Then you have more drugs treating the symptoms and that's most people are in this kind of loop. Yeah. In conventional medicine, it's great for acute issues when it's an acute one off. I got in a car accident. I broke my arm. The underlying cause of why my arm was broken was the car accident. That's not happening anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Therefore, treating the broken arm with a brace, surgery, whatever, cast, that fixes the underlying cause. But most of our conditions are chronic. There are little car accidents happening every single day, all the time. If you go in to manage this blood sugar issue or this chronic, you're not fixing the underlying car accidents happening every day with our chronic health challenges.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Then you're never getting to the root cause. And conventional medicine does wonderful with the root cause is isolated. Not when it's chronic and happening over and over at a micro level every day.
Allison Samon: Yeah. And the beauty of it is when you're using diet and lifestyle, it's so funny when people are concerned about, right?
Allison Samon: Can I eat this? Is it safe or even a nutraceutical? That's just like food. And is this even safe? It's not FDA approved. And it's it's not a drug it's food. And yes, some foods will counteract it, especially if you're on a medication. And so like there, there can be, but.
Allison Samon: Usually, when you're bringing in food, or you're able to break down and absorb the nutrients in your food, then, instead of having a cascade of more and more symptoms, like the, you watch the pharmaceutical commercial and it's like a hundred things long, including death, might happen, instead, you're having a ripple effect of that feels better.
Allison Samon: I love this story. I have a client who's an eye doctor. She didn't know that she was dehydrated. Her eyes! She always suffered from dry eye and didn't realize that she was dehydrated. She was drinking, I think, between two and four cups of tea a day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Dehydrated.
Allison Samon: And so we had her drinking water and she's my hair is shinier.
Allison Samon: I can see better. She's an eye doctor. And I love her. I love that she was so open to, to consider something as simple as that in her expertise. She'd never considered. Cause she wasn't taught that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: It's amazing when you work with patients and you just work on the low hanging fruit, right? You get the hydration dialed in, whatever your amount, half your body weight analysis is probably a good general recommendation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Adding some electrolytes in there is great. Dialing in, your, good anti inflammatory whole foods type of dietary template. Really focusing on good macros, getting enough protein, getting enough good quality vegetables getting, a little bit of movement, getting your sleep dialed in, just the foundation of that alone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Forget anything fancy on the functional medicine side. That, that sets the table for a lot of magic to occur if someone's eating kind of the standard American way.
Allison Samon: Yeah, and that's the thing, that's the place that we start, and usually when people hear that, I work in I'm a functional nutritionist, and so the first question is always, oh, so you can run functional labs?
Allison Samon: And yeah, I can, but I'm not gonna start there. There's so much fun! Tools out there, right? There's so many fun labs that we can do. And if wishes were fishes and your pocketbook was really deep Oh, let's just see what's going on in there. But is it necessary? No. And it's usually not right now because of all the things that you just described.
Allison Samon: Like they don't have blood sugar balance. They're not pooping. They're not sleeping. They're not hydrated. Let's work on those first, that we call non negotiables, let's work on that first. And then, when we're like, huh, I think there might be infection here, or maybe there's mold, or like what, maybe there's food sensitivity, like what's happening here?
Allison Samon: We need, then we bring in testing to figure out like, to either, to confirm something that we already assumed, or to just rule something out. Usually, the basics have not been tended to. Dr. Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Marchegiani Well, what's your approach to assess and or help patients with mold issues?
Allison Samon: First it's all of the things, making sure that the toxic tap is turned off. So like the, let's start with your home. Is there a leak in your home? It's was there rain? Is there, something that needs to be fixed? Has there been, and oftentimes there will be, and then of course, then we would do. testing, right?
Allison Samon: So we would do so there's a, either an oats test or what is it? It's Genova has a,
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: there's a urine, there's some urinary mycotoxin test out. I look at mycotoxin in the urine.
Allison Samon: Yeah. Yeah. Is that Genova?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: They may have that one. The one I use is by mosaic, but I think real time lab has some, there's a couple that are out there by some different companies with a look at the mycotoxins coming out in the urine.
Allison Samon: Yeah. Yeah that's where we start. When you have mold, so that's nasty, right? That's really, how do you look at some,
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: how do you guide people to help them look at their house? Do you do any different testing inside their home? Whether it's like plate or army testing, like what's your take there?
Allison Samon: There are definitely. I have a few resources that I will point people to have these people come to your house and see because there are kits, but I don't know necessarily how accurate they are. We had a mold situation, actually, while I was pregnant, we had a mold situation. And and fortunately I had no problems.
Allison Samon: I must say, Have good genes. I must have good genes because I've definitely been through a lot or what I do for it is Helping but one third of the
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: population really is sensitive to mold where they like get foggy have the neurological kind of issues most of the population isn't. That's the part of the hard thing because it's just, you get all it takes is a husband and wife.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And let's say the wife has all these issues and the husband's I'm fine. This is good. Like, why are we spending 100, 000 on this? I've seen that be a major stressor on relationships because it's literally not impacting someone else that it's impacting the other person. And then it's, it's hard to see sometimes you may not even be able to see the mold unless it's a, really acute leak intrusion.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: It could be at a subclinical level where you can't see it.
Allison Samon: It could also be from something in the past. I had a client, she was, it had severe, like just cognitive issues. She just couldn't, she couldn't, she ended up having to take a sabbatical from work and she worked in health care, she couldn't function.
Allison Samon: And through our health history that we do a very thorough health history and she had lived in a, an apartment by the beach. And it was. They suspected mold, had a big fight with the landlord, ended up moving out, but she really thought that there was black mold there. And but she's but this is years ago.
Allison Samon: It was like three years prior. And I was like, I think that was part of the problem. with you. But sometimes it's like, how do you feel when you're not in? So sometimes it comes with you because it's in there and it's, yes, but sometimes it's, how do you
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: feel when you're out? How do you feel when you're out?
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And I'll do plate testing to see what's going on with plates because that, that can be helpful. And and also you can have a mold with just, high levels of humidity and then just having dust in the air. All you need is oxygen. Moisture and food, carbohydrate. So dust and moisture is gonna be there if the humidity and then if you everyone's gonna have oxygen unless it's contained.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: But that's it. Yeah. So yeah, I get that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's nasty. And if somebody has low stomach acid, if somebody is malnourished, if that's gonna set you up for infection, overgrowth, and so again, that's why we start with these basics. And if we know that these things haven't been in play and we look at somebody's history and we're like, yeah, there's probably quite possibly mold here or infection here.
Allison Samon: But again, in order to be able to treat it, to go through a kill to detoxify that you have to be stable. You have to have that foundation of support before we can do anything like that, because I usually get the people who have been through kills with previous. Doctors who didn't address any of that other stuff and they were sicker after and then we have to back it up Start here get them to a place where they're feeling better knowing not that it's curing anything Because we still have to kill
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: right
Allison Samon: but They are better able to handle to, um, just withstand bringing in killing agents and really creating a war zone in their digestive system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Also, a lot of the mold detoxifications and it happened hepato biliary, that means liver gallbladder, which dumps into your gut. And if you don't have good gut function, then you're going to reabsorb a lot of this stuff. Also that the beneficial bacteria in that gut. has a way of neutralizing some of these mold toxins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: The more beneficial your bacteria is, good liver gallbladder function. Now, if you get exposed to mold now you're eliminating because you have good motility, you have good detoxification, glutathione, and acetylation, but then you also have the bacteria balance that's also helping to neutralize it, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: We run some of these organic acid tests, you probably do, too, where you see a lot of colonized mold. You'll see this aspergillus or fusarium colonized in the gut where your gut's almost a factory of making mold.
Allison Samon: Yeah. And so again, depending on what the symptoms are. So if I see a lot of skin rashes I know something going on in your gut and people want the cream, they want the pharmaceutical, they want the whatever.
Allison Samon: And I'm like, that's fine and all, but that's not going to fix it. I
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: get to the underlying issue at the same time, ideally do both or do something more natural on top and then hit the internal side of the fence too. I agree.
Allison Samon: And so when we, when it gets to that point, we've done all of the things and then it's yeah, okay, we have to find out what exactly is in there.
Allison Samon: So we know what it is that we're killing and how best to kill it. Blanket kill because you're you won't necessarily get it or it might be resistant to whatever agent you're using
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: I agree. Anything else here you want to leave us with Allison, any other big topics or big other issues you want to touch upon?
Allison Samon: I would just say, we can't talk about nutrition without digestive function and a lot of people are just like, just, Just tell me what to eat. And you're, it really depends on what you can do with the food that you eat, what your body can do with that food. And we got to get them into yourselves and we can do that.
Allison Samon: We can do that in ways that are easy, fun and sustainable. That's that's my thing. And I want to make it easy for you, even if you have been struggling for a long time or are super picky eater. Cause I was once too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Awesome. If people want to find your website, it's at chronic relief or chronic illness relief.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: com.
Allison Samon: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm health alley on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, chronic illness relief. com. So I do have a gift for your listeners if that's okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Yeah, that's great. Put the link down below for the site as well as the gift.
Allison Samon: It is a, my chronic illness recovery guide. And so it's the five steps that I took.
Allison Samon: It won't take you 10 years to figure it out. It took me that long, but these are the five steps where you can begin to heal. It's your roadmap to healing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: And what's the link for that?
Allison Samon: Dr. Alison Jaffee Chronicillnessrelief. com Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: homepage. There'll be like a little button there for
Allison Samon: it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Good. All right. We'll put that link there. So we, everyone gets it. All right. Excellent. Alison, nice chatting with you. Very nice chat. Really appreciate your experience as always. Dr. Fun to understand how other people made their way to the functional medicine field, it's that that, that bond that as practitioners have, we've gone through that ourselves personally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: So I get it. That makes sense. Cool. Anything else, Alison?
Allison Samon: No, that's it. I appreciate you being here. I love the work that you're doing and the people that you've studied with or the people that I go anytime there's a lecture, I'm there when they're speaking. So I big fan and I appreciate what you do.
Allison Samon: Thanks so much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiai: Thanks Alison. Really appreciate it. Take care.
===============
speak pipe
Rumble
Youtube
Apple
LIBSYN
Bitchute