Why You Still Feel Sick: The Mystery of Histamines, Long COVID & POTS

Summary

Stronger with Don Saladino – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Why You Still Feel Sick: The Mystery of Histamines, Long COVID & POTS
Host: Don Saladino
Guest: Michelle Shapiro, RD
Date: October 14, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this insightful episode, Don Saladino sits down with functional and integrative dietitian Michelle Shapiro for a deep dive into why so many people continue to feel unwell despite healthy behaviors. The conversation centers on the misunderstood roles of histamines, Long COVID, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), and hypermobility syndromes. Drawing from Michelle’s clinical expertise and personal health journey, the episode unpacks how immune system dysregulation can manifest as persistent, mysterious symptoms—and how personalized approaches, mindset, and nervous system support are key to real healing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are Histamines? (04:15)

• Definition: Histamines are chemical messengers released from mast cells (immune cells) causing vasodilation, aiding immune response and nutrient delivery.
• Don: “Is it almost like a defense mechanism?”
• Michelle: “Correct. ...Your nervous system or immune system is basically saying, okay, something’s not right. And then your histamine gets released.” (05:10)
• Common Signs: Allergic reactions like sneezing, rashes, vasodilation-induced redness on the skin.

2. Recognizing Histamine Issues – More Than Allergies (06:14)

• Feeling worse with healthy eating, new, persistent gut issues (severe diarrhea, urinary frequency), dizziness, sudden severe insomnia.
• Symptoms linked to post-COVID illness, unexplained anxiety with heart rate changes, poor exercise recovery, and hives/rashes.
• Michelle: “If you notice you felt sicker after COVID for a long period of time, I’d definitely look into a histamine issue.” (06:38)

3. Frustrations with Functional/Conventional Medicine (07:54)

• Many clients are “functional medicine dropouts,” meaning even advanced practitioners have missed the root cause—histamine sensitivity.
• Michelle: “It’s not the SIBO game, it’s not the leaky gut game. It’s a different game.” (07:59)

4. Treatment Realities & Mindset Shifts (09:09)

• Symptom relief often requires “sledgehammer” use of OTC antihistamines (Zyrtec, Allegra, Pepcid) for several months as a first step.
• Key insight: symptoms sometimes resolve immediately after a mindset shift or breakthrough.
• Memorable Quote: “You have to get—start treating the storm down... For some reason, the higher your histamines are, the more your body produces histamines. You just have to take a sledgehammer to it.” (09:23, Michelle)

5. Michelle’s Personal Health Journey: Weight Loss, Anxiety, & Illness (10:45–17:09)

• Grew up overweight, lost nearly 100 lbs. rapidly before college, became chronically ill from severe under-eating and overuse of “healthy” strategies like veganism and energy drinks.
• Developed panic attacks and agoraphobia; sought solutions through massive self-education and, eventually, a naturopathic doctor, discovering severe nutrient deficiencies.
• Quote: “Just because you look skinny doesn’t mean you’re healthy.” (13:11, Don)
• Recovery required addressing both physiological and psychological roots.

6. Food Is Medicine—But Not for Everyone, Always (20:42)

• Michelle highlights that trendy modalities (saunas, cold plunges) are “cherry on the whipped cream”—without safety, stability, and real food, they can’t solve baseline dysregulation.
• Michelle: “People do not feel like they either recognize their bodies or feel safe inside of their bodies. Nothing changes that besides listening to what your body needs...” (21:05)

7. Long COVID, POTS, Mast Cells & Hypermobility—A Troubling Intersection (24:01)

• Michelle’s second health crisis: Long COVID led to constant dizziness, severe heart rate instability (POTS), and the need for a neck brace after minor physical trauma.
• Hypermobility syndromes—like Ehlers-Danlos—often coexist, further destabilizing blood vessels and connective tissue.
• Quote: “There’s a combination of syndromes that travel together: Long COVID, mast cell activation syndrome, POTS, and hypermobility.” (24:35, Michelle)

8. Rehabilitation and the Importance of Muscle Stability (27:43)

• Working with specialized PTs and chiros is essential for hypermobile or POTS patients—a focus on muscle strength over flexibility.
• Many clients “gravitate to what interests them, not what they need.” (29:23, Don)
• Rehab requires patience and strategic support.

9. Mindset & Resilience in Chronic Illness (31:27)

• The lowest point: “There was a moment... I remember looking in the mirror… and was like, ‘Dude, you’re not going to make it through this.’ ...And then another part of me came out—don’t ever say that again. ...You cannot afford to victim yourself.” (32:01–33:41, Michelle)
• Success stories hinge on those who address the mental game head-on.

10. Practical Nutrition Lessons & Histamine Management (34:48)

• Michelle had to drastically shift diet (abandoning veganism) for nutrient repletion.
• Irony: many “healthy” foods (fermented, citrus, avocado, spinach, tomatoes) are high in histamines and can trigger major reactions in sensitive individuals.
• Describes the low-histamine diet as “necessary but not healthy” and always temporary.
• Eventually, many people can reintroduce problematic foods—except, for Michelle, pickles! (38:09)

11. Long COVID—Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Hope (41:44)

• Long COVID can devastate quality of life, even more than cancer, due to its invisible, misunderstood, and persistent symptoms.
• Mast cell activation (release of histamines and other compounds from immune cells) appears central to the syndrome post-infection.
• Quote: “I have never seen someone in my practice who has Long COVID and doesn’t have MCAS [Mast Cell Activation Syndrome]. Never.” (44:24, Michelle)
• Don: “Is it correctable?”
• Michelle: “Absolutely. ...It’s all about increasing the baseline, reducing the flares. ...I don’t get dizziness, I don’t get histamine symptoms... I had a very severe case of Long COVID.” (44:33–45:53)
• Key symptoms: dizziness, heart rate issues, insomnia, severe fatigue, unusual immune responses.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Michelle, on Histamine Overflow:
  “If you feel like you get really sick the healthier you eat…that’s a sign to me.” (06:14)

• Michelle, on Mindset Breakthroughs:
  “You can notice symptom reduction in a day, and if you change your mindset—in one second.” (09:54)

• Michelle, on Personal Low Points:
  “I remember looking in the mirror… and was like, ‘Dude, you’re not going to make it through this.’ ...with these conditions... you cannot afford to victim yourself...” (32:01–33:41)

• Don, on Support:
  “The people who make the most change in their lives are the ones that go and attack that mental side of it first.” (33:41)

• Michelle, practical advice:
  “Foods that are high in histamines are very healthy... fermented foods, citrus, avocado, spinach, tomatoes... If your body is high in histamines, eating more can make you sick.” (35:02–36:32)

• Michelle, on Progress:
  “I can eat any high-histamine food now except for pickles, which is painful. As a Jew, it’s painful that I can’t eat pickles.” (37:54)

• On Medical Practices:
  “Most PTs and chiros should be doing a hypermobility assessment on clients. What a hypermobile person needs is not more stretching, but more stability.” (29:23, Michelle)

• Long COVID a Real-Life Crisis:
  “The quality of life for those with Long COVID was often lower than those with stage four cancer...If you have long COVID and you’re like, ‘I have this weird, mysterious condition,’ people are like: you’re faking it.” (41:44, Michelle)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro to Histamines: 04:15
• Histamine Symptoms & Red Flags: 06:14
• Medical System Limitations: 07:54
• Treatment Realities & Mindset: 09:09
• Michelle’s Origin Story/Health Crisis: 10:45–17:09
• Food as Medicine & Real Recovery: 20:42
• Long COVID, POTS, Mast Cells, Hypermobility: 24:01–29:23
• Mindset & Chronic Illness Recovery: 31:27–33:41
• Managing Histamine with Diet: 34:48–39:28
• Long COVID Science and Hope: 41:44–46:04
• Quiz & Resources Mentioned: 47:26

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Resources & Closing

• Michelle offers a free quiz: Are You Living in a Highly Sensitive Body?
• Visit Michelle’s Instagram and website for more support on histamine, POTS, long COVID, and personalized “battle plans.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for anyone struggling with mystery symptoms or post-viral illness. Michelle’s practical, compassionate approach empowers listeners to reframe persistent health struggles, focus on well-being over diagnostics, and seek real, customized healing—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Don’s empathetic hosting draws out the human story behind the science and brings today’s most confounding health puzzles into sharp relief.

For those suffering or searching, this episode delivers clarity, validation, and real hope for stronger health.

Transcript

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[Don]

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Stronger. In this episode, I'm bringing on my friend Michelle Shapiro. I met Michelle through Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and she is one of the brightest minds in nutrition. She's also a very funny person. We've got some great dialogue going back and forth, but when I brought Michelle in, it was really discussed more of the personalized nutrition that she, you know, approaches with her clients mindset. But what I grew to realize pretty quick is that she really specializes in people with. With highly sensitive. I can't even say sensitive issues. Highly sensitive issues. So if you have long Covid pot, histamine disorders, these are things that Michelle has really made a specialty in. I, I could not believe how much I learned from her and I could not believe how many people out there actually have these issues and don't know about it. So I think that's something that you guys are going to really want to tune in on today. What are those symptoms that you might be experiencing and you just can't figure out why am I going through this right? And I looked at Sierra and I said, because Michelle noted that you and others should pay close attention to histamines because they can cause widespread issues like dizziness, severe insomnia, heart rate changes, physiological anxiety, rashes, and fatigue. I mean, God, and there's nothing worse than not being able to sleep. I mean, we've talked about this, so I think if you're going through some of these things, you may want to listen to this episode. You loved it. I loved it. We're going to have her back on. She doesn't even know that yet. I'm going to reach out to her and invite her back on. But guys, let's go. Hope you enjoy this one. So one of the reasons why this show is able to go on is because of our great support system, one of them being rag and bone. Now, rag and bone is very fashionable, very comfortable, which is important for me. I'm a 210 pound guy, so I don't like walking around things that are so tight. I just don't feel like it's a good look for me. So wearing things that are a little bit looser, they have that option. On the other hand, being able to wear shirts that are a little bit more fitted, they have it as well. So it's time to upgrade your denim with rag and bone. And this is the truth. Why am I going to say this? Because rag and bone came out with these denim jeans. It's almost, it's so funny how, you know, denim has changed throughout the years. You know, they went with loose back when I was in high school then people are wearing shorter and tighter now. I feel like some of the denim styles are getting a little baggier and looser now, which honestly, like, I just like, I don't like wearing things that are too tight. But for a limited time, our listeners get 20 off their entire order with code stronger. That's 20% [e-mail] with promo code stronger. S T R O N G E R. Hope you can spell that. When they ask where you heard about them, please support our show and let them know we sent you. All right. Tell them we sent you and I can assure you you're going to absolutely love it. I'm in love with the products. What can I say? Thanks, guys. You are a very well respected rd. Someone in the fit. No, you are. You are in the health and wellness field and I love your on everything that you're attacking because you're even like you go to your social media page and you've been leaning a lot into histamines. And when I say leaning, that's not, that's, that's legitimate. Like these are issues. People are having anxiety. Talk to us about histamines a little bit because I think it's also going to, you know, turn a light on a lot of people's heads to where they're going to say to themselves, well, maybe I need to start paying more closer attention to this.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah. So histamines are a chemical messenger that are released from sacs and our mast cells, which are immune cells that were. They're a type of white blood cells. Histamines are there to basically open up your blood vessels they cause something called vasodilation, which I'm sure, Don, this is a word in your world, the opening of your blood vessels. When people have high blood pressure, they often want more vasodilation. Not if you have a histamine issue. Basically it'll create like a slide in your body so that nutrients and immune cells can kind of like if you open up the blood vessels, it'll make it so easy for things to travel throughout the body. They are involved in an inflammatory respons body as well as the other mediators that come out of mast cells.

[Don]

So is it almost like a defense mechanism? Like so histamine gets released from your body, part of your immune response. So it gets released when you're. Can you say like your nervous system.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Is basically nervous system or immune system.

[Don]

Is saying like, okay, so something's not right.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Correct.

[Don]

And then your histamine gets released in your body. So when we're hearing, you know, this time of the year and it's the spring or the fall and people are sneezing, what is really happening there?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah. So what's happening is allergies themselves again are activating our mast cells, our body, like whatever the allergens are they coming in through our nose, our mouth, our eyes.

[Don]

Is that like pollen, like poly stuff?

[Michelle Shapiro]

So when you think about like a blister that you have in your body, it's a fluid filled blister, it's mucus is similar too. So during an inflammatory response, your body will send mucus to sites of injury essentially and will create mucus to. For irritated areas in your body as well. The other thing that happens a lot with seasonal allergies, people will get rashes and things like that. That is literally vasodilation. Your blood vessels opening up and you can see the blood pooling on the surface of your skin. So that is what the rashes that we often think of that come from allergies are from histamines causing that vasodilation response.

[Don]

But like, what would, what would be some of the indicators to where you'd say, you know, call me up or, or this is where you need to reach out to me. Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So some signs that you might be having a histamine issue are if you feel like you get really sick the healthier you eat. That's a sign to me. Because if you're eating a lot healthier and you're feeling really sick and that could be again, it's almost like a general feeling of offness that I see with people with this. She's like something feels really weird and wrong. I'm a little disoriented. Or you're getting really strong. Like severe diarrhea or gut issues, which can happen. Like urinary frequencies. Very common. People histamine issues, constant dizziness, severe insomnia. That's comes on pretty suddenly. If you notice you felt sicker after Covid for a long period of time, I would definitely look into a histamine issue. There's a very strong correlation between histamine issues and long Covid and long Covid. Something we could talk for hours about because it's really fascinating. But I anxiety that feels very physiological, I'd say, for people's heart rate changes that. Again, like, you're like, this is nothing to do with my heart. I went to the cardiolog. My heart's gorgeous. Like, there's no problem with your heart. Things like that. Where you notice when you make postural changes again. Oh, I went from sitting to standing. I almost feel like I'm blacking out. That would lead me in the direction of a histamine issue. From a practitioner standpoint, if you're going to a functional medicine doctor and you're getting sicker and sicker and not better, that's a sign there's histamine issue. I will tell you, Don, most of my clients are now the people who are injured from functional medicine doctors and I love functional medicine doctors and I love functional medicine. But it's because it's not the same game. It's not the sibo game. It's not the leaky gut game. It's a different game. So when you do like a mold detox or a parasite cleanse or something like that, your body reacts from the detox so much stronger that you get sicker.

[Don]

Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So if you're getting sicker, you're getting sicker, by the way. That's what I want to tell people. So that's usually the people who come to me long ago, you know this. The advertisement for functional medicine was this. If you've been to conventional medicine doctors and they didn't help you, where your guys. That's where you come to right now. It's like, okay, functional medicine guys weren't for you and ladies, of course me now, that's who I'm getting. So I'm not getting the conventional medicine dropouts anymore. I'm getting the functional medicine dropouts. And when I mean dropouts, I mean functional medicine failed them. They didn't fail functional medicine. So that's what I would say is like, or you exercise and then you get like rashes all over your body. Hives feel really weird. Not recovering, extreme fatigue after heart rate issues. That's where I start looking at his what's.

[Don]

So if someone comes in, they fully commit and they surrender and you know what I'm talking about. Because this is a mental battle with what you have to deal with. Every client coming in, it's all right. Is this a. Tell me what I have to do and I'm going to do this the way that you would do this. That's how well I like to follow instructions. Or is it like pulling teeth if someone's going to come in and fully commit to making these changes? And do you find, and it's probably, you probably can't answer this. Do you find there's a window of time, a year to two years, 18 months around when you start seeing symptoms change or.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, you know, so there's a, there's a number with histamine issues. Specifically, you need to. And it's. This is a really weird thing with histamine issues. 90 of the time I have to use anti histamine, like over the counter drugs, like I'll have to use like Zyrtec, Allegra, Pepcid, just to get the.

[Don]

Symptoms to calm down.

[Michelle Shapiro]

You have to get. Start treating the storm down. Exactly. Yeah. And then for some reason our body is this weird thing where the higher your histamines are, the more your body produces histamines. You just have to take a sledgehammer to it. And so that process takes three months. So you can notice symptom reduction in a day. And if you change your mindset in one second, and I really, really mean that. Like I have those moments with clients where I'm like, oh, it. Boom. That's it. And they're like, you will not believe this, Michelle. I have not had symptoms for weeks. I'm like, no, I know the moment when it happened.

[Don]

What a nice feeling.

[Michelle Shapiro]

You have to switch it. Something has to click and then you really have to get the histamines down. So that takes a little bit of time. So rerouting the nervous system and histamines, it could take three months. I don't, I don't work with clients for less than three months. None of my team does. We have four practitioners plus me. We have a fifth one coming on soon.

[Don]

Congrats.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Thank you. And I don't usually take one on one anymore unless it's someone who's really, really needs me too. Yeah. Otherwise I have my, like, you I have the same clients for five years. Like, and those are, like, my people and. Exactly. I had two major health crises in my life that defined the work that I. Which is why I really do. Like, thank God, the universe that these things happen. I'm like, you don. I'm like, give me the bottom of the barrel health stuff, because I want. If I can't figure it out, I don't know who can. So I. I always say that. I'm like, it. It has to be us. Like, right? I. I'm willing to experience it all, and I sure have.

[Don]

You got an interesting story.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Would love to share it.

[Don]

You've got a very interesting story. So you have boatloads of success stories, but you were 100 pounds heavier at one point. You went through it, like, how did this all. Like, how did this all start? Like, where did your.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Where did.

[Don]

Where's the origin story here? Like. Like, give it to us.

[Michelle Shapiro]

It starts in Queens. New York City, baby. Right here in Queens. So I did grow up in Queens, and I had, honestly, an amazing life in about every single way. Friends, grades, like, beautiful life. But growing up, I was always in a larger body. Like, I kind of was the person who, when I was like, six, I gained, like, an extra 10 pounds, and every year, it just became the extra 10 pounds. So by the time I was in high school, I was morbidly obese, and I was like, class clown in my high school. 5,000 students. Crowning achievement of my life. Like, everyone loved you. Yeah, exactly. Like, same thing.

[Don]

I was most talkative.

[Michelle Shapiro]

That's the same thing.

[Don]

It kind of is.

[Michelle Shapiro]

It's the same exact thing.

[Don]

Yours is cool, though. Most talkative. Just sounds annoying. They're like, shut up. Like, that class clown's funny. Most talkative.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I think you are gregarious. That's the word I would use. He is. He's quite gregarious. You are. It's true. So in high school, again, wait for me. It didn't hold me back from that much. From, like, a social aspect. I never felt sick or anything, but I was going into college, and I was going from Queens. This the most diverse place in the entire world. My high school is one of the most diverse high schools in the world.

[Don]

Which high school?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Cardozo High School.

[Don]

Yeah, I know.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Cardoza. Yeah, I. Every time I see someone they know because there's 5,000 students a year, so it's like, you know. So going into college, I realized, you know, people aren't gonna know. Oh, she's Michelle Shapiro. She's cool. They're gonna judge me based on my appearance. And I was going to the University of Delaware and I knew Delaware is not a place like Queens where people are accepted for like whatever race, gender, sexual orientation, body size. I knew it's going to be a much more homogenous place. Like, so I realized I kind of have to lose weight before I go to school because people are going to judge based on first impressions and that's how they're. People are going to make like new friends. I've had, I had this like amazing community and then realized I was going into a new one. So I went on a very rapid weight loss journey before going to college and lost close to £100 in less than, I think it was like six months or something. It was very, very rapid. I basically am the type of person like you don, where if I say I'm doing something, I'm doing it. So I just went on a very calorie restrict diet and spent honestly much of college very chronically ill. I was at like a healthy weight, but I was really sick and I couldn't understand why and started to unpack. Maybe the rapid weight loss actually wasn't the most amazing thing for my body and put my body into that kind of what I, what I think is toxic.

[Don]

Which is, which is actually, you know, it's amazing to think that people still can't relate that, you know, just because you look skinny doesn't mean you're healthy. Right. And there's so many. So. So this was, this was a time of your life where you started drinking. Like you were mentioning energy drinks.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, I would drink eight low carb monsters a day and I was on like a 500 calorie diet.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

Oh God.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I have to issue a trigger warning because I'm really asking people, please do not do this part of the story. This is what cost me basically like 10 years of illness. So it really wasn't worth it in the end. And then at the same time, from a nuanced lens, I don't know that I would have lost weight if I didn't do it black and white like that because that's just how my brain works. So I think every part of my story was there for a reason, but I would not recommend it to anyone doing it.

[Don]

I developed anxiety. I remember reading a post of yours where you went to, I think Europe for the first time or London, and you were talking about a picture and it was like this picture here was a moment for you. And I looked at that and I was really Able to kind of feel you and connect you. Not because I went through it, but I thought it was so admirable for you to turn around and say this was a moment where, you know, I used to not be able to leave 100ft from a location I was at. I used to have anxiety attacks several times a day. I was actually able to go, go away. Non scale victories here. You know, everyone, everyone is always looking at, well, I'm, I'm, you know, he's skinny, she's skinny. That, that's nothing to do with health.

[Michelle Shapiro]

No. And if you've experienced severe panic attacks, like it's such a specific feeling that you could not explain to someone. It's like I feel like I'm gonna die for no reason or for a reason. So for myself with my panic attacks manifested as agoraphobia. So it was like a fear of leaving. So what it turned into was because I have never, I've always been a high, like hyper social person. Very, very social person. In college I like couldn't be alone. So I would have like all of my friends sleeping over every single night. Like, I don't think I like didn't sleep in the same room as someone the entire time I was in college. Like not even a roommate. Like just other friends, they had to sleep on the floor. That like, is that because.

[Don]

Well, is that because you were having anxiety or is it just because you.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Wanted having anxiety and also was like had really severe insomnia, was up all night and hated being alone and, and that's like something that's changed.

[Don]

It's a terrible feeling.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, it was a terrible feeling. And I just wasn't comfortable being with myself. And it was honestly driven by a lot of physiological stuff that I learned later. Because we often think of panic attacks and anxiety as being purely mental. I think of them as being very physiological and I think there's a lot of drivers for them. But when it came to the agoraphobia and not want not being able to leave the house without having a panic attack, I remember I was driving from Queens back to Delaware and my aunt was talking about how our cousin went on a trip on birthright to Israel and said like, you really have to go, Michelle, you really have to go. And I was like, I'm going to tell you something to my aunt, who is a family friend, but I call her at my end. I'm like, enid, I want to tell you something. I can't even think about walking five steps in front of me. I think I'm going to die on the car ride to Delaware. That's rough. You're talking about flying 12 hours away. I'm like, I'm trying to not die in the next 10 minutes or throw up out of your car window. Like, that's how minute to minute it was for me and how the perspective people did not understand where I was. And it was so counter to my personality. Like, it's just so unlike me to be like that because I'm so connected and outgoing and it's like I want to do things with the people I love more than anything in the world. So the healing from the panic side of it.

[Don]

Right.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Was one of the most important, like, parts of my healing journey. And I think one of the most, like, important pieces of forming my identity and who I am now.

[Don]

Well, I mean, I don't want to jump ahead to that, but in a way I really do. Because you went from such a bad place, even though most people would have looked at you and said, she's not. And that's probably more common than most people think. How did you start? I mean, so you were able to drop the weight. Didn't mean you were healthy. What clicked in your head that suddenly you said, I have to start educating myself. And now I'm assuming that because you were able to heal yourself, you're like, I'm making a career out of this because I'm really connected to this.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Absolutely. Yeah. So I went to school originally for marketing, but I wanted to go into nutrition even though I had already lost the weight, like many dietitians do, because I wanted to learn more secrets of weight loss. And I was like, oh, I'm going to go into this dietetics degree and I'm going to lose even more weight. I'm going to learn more. And what ended up happening was in the dietetics degree, I was like, oh, you're grossly undereating. And everyone I was with was like, you're not eating it. Like, you're. You're eating way too little. So actually the dietetics degree helped me to at least understand that I was under fueling myself. But that wasn't really enough for me because the dietetics degree did not give me any support with my anxiety and had there was no functional, holistic aspect to it that led me and made me really able to help myself in that regard. So I ended up seeking after college the help of a naturopathic physician. And this was only I developed in college what I call, like, my first battle plan. I call My client plans, battle plans. And I basically, like, read as many books as I could, Blogs, anything I could get my hands on at the time. Because this is like in the early 2000s, obviously, so anything I get my hands on to try to understand what helps anxiety. So I was like, okay, there's something about magnesium, there's something about blood sugar. I was using these different, like, audiobooks, whatever was available at the time. And I was reading, like hundreds of books on anxiety. And I basically developed what I call my first battle plan, where I said, how do you target anxiety? Lifestyle supplement, nutrition. And I wrote myself out this plan. And I said, you're going to target this from every angle. And if you can't get yourself better, you'll get help from, like a functional medicine doctor or something. Which wasn't really a thing then, by the way.

[Don]

Right.

[Michelle Shapiro]

But I was like, I think there's like an adrenal fatigue, something I wasn't sure and I didn't learn in my degree. So I would say I got myself about 80% better. And then I went to seek help with a naturopathic physician. Dr. Robert Kochko is one of my best friends now, and I, like, forced him to be my best friend in that first appointment. It was like a two hour appointment. I was like, it's weird you think you're my doctor because we're like, no, but. And then we became business partners and best friends, of course. I was like, you're. You don't get it. What's about to happen? Your life is over now. Like, we're done.

[Don]

He loves you.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah. One of my closest people in my life. And he sat with me for two hours and he ran lab tests that showed me, here's what's going on with your stress hormones. And I was like, oh, you can see anxiety on paper. And it blew.

[Don]

That makes sense.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yes. So I understood. Finally. I had severe vitamin B deficiencies. All these things that I read about was what I was experiencing. So that took me that extra 20% of the way. But I had to get myself there and get to the point where I said, okay, now I need even more help. And that's also what prompted me into functional dietetics as opposed to just dietetics, too.

[Don]

Yeah. It's also impressive at that time in your life that you understood the food is medicine approach, because I think a lot of people in the beginning, they want to eat well for, you know, vanity purposes and weight loss, et cetera. And you can feel it. I can feel it. Like, if I turn around and decide to, you know, eat one night, like, I'm going to the electric chair, which doesn't really happen much. But, like, just say, it's a holiday, you're having fun, you're letting your hair down the next day, mood's off, energy's off, sleep quality's off. But I just love how you took this food is medicine approach. It's. I'm not going to say it's simple in the sense of like, oh, it doesn't. No, you take a simple. You understand. And you. You also did another post. I always, you know, diving in on you. You're talking about, you know, oh, yes, the saunas are fine, the cold punches are fine. But guys, like, that is the. That is a fraction. It gets a bit frustrating how people put so much weight into these things. I think they're valuable. But when you're going to weigh them in comparison, like, it's not even a comparison. Like sleep, diet, exercise.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, there's not. It's the tip of the pyramid. If there's like a pyramid, we all, like, can evoke this, like, Maslow's hierarchy of needs in our head. If you think of, like, the bottom of the pyramid, it's like the essentials. Shelter, having access to food, like, the most baseline essentials. And then like cold, plunging, sauna, all those things. They're not going to literally make your body feel safer.

[Don]

Cherry on the whipped cream.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Fabulous. We use them all time. I saw on all the time. We love these tools. They're amazing tools and they're effective tools, but they do not treat the baseline issue, which is that people do not feel like they either recognize their bodies or feel safe inside of their bodies. And nothing changes that besides listening to what your body needs and then handing it to your body. And that's a lot of the work that I do with clients. It's less about, like, the actual, like, nutrients in food, which is funny. It's more about building that communication. Because I don't know what a client's body needs until they can answer the call from within their body. Body. And everyone's different.

[Don]

Honestly, when they start feeling it, though, I think that becomes motivated.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Magic.

[Don]

I think it's magic because suddenly you're like, oh, well. And you hear from people, why, Why'd you start partying? Why'd you stop partying? They're like, because I just started enjoying waking up Saturday morning feeling good.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Exactly.

[Don]

And I'm like, oh, my God, that's. That's a. That. That's a beautiful thing. All right. Guys, first off, I have to thank my sponsors. One of them right now being Mito Pure. Thank you guys for. For just being a loyal sponsor of ours. Probably. I think it was our first one. Was our first sponsor. Yeah, I think it was. I'm saying it was. So they have a few different products. They have Mito Pure, which is a urolith in a product, which is why I am in my 60s and I look like I'm in my early 40s. So I've been taking this product for a while. My skin, my lines, my energy level, my mitochondrial function is fantastic. And this is one of those supplements. I am not. I like supplements. But you got to understand, I really value the importance of nutrition and sleep. Mito Pure, their urolithin a supplement. I take four capsules a day. That's a thousand milligrams. I take it religiously. And I really can't travel without it now because I have seen benefits come from this. With probably about three to six months, I just started feeling like my skin was glowing a little bit more. I was feeling a bit younger. I was okay. I'm not 60. I'm 48. Cats out of the bag now. They also have these gummies that are delicious. And they also have a powder, which is fantastic as well, if you're into powder. So that's it, guys. Might appear again. Thank you again, Timeline. Thank you. And timeline is offering 20% off your first order of Mito Pure. Go to timeline.com stronger. That's T I M E L I N E.com stronger. I can't believe I actually had to read how to spell timeline. I did, though. Thanks, guys.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So I had this first weight loss experience. And from that, that's where I learned kind of my roadmap for helping clients with anxiety and the mindset of anxiety. And there's like, really specific tools that I. And then I had a second health crisis about four years ago where I had Covid. I got long Covid and then I had all these mysterious symptoms. And I don't know you're familiar with. Obviously you're well into the functional medicine space. So you see posts. It was a lot about, like, leaky gut sibo. A lot of that was popular, but there was this, like, new set of symptoms I had never experienced in my life.

[Don]

What were you. What were you experiencing?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, so I was having intense dizziness all the time. And I was. I had tremors. Like, I would get these adrenaline dumps.

[Don]

Did you get shortness of breath ever? Did you.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Shortness of Breath. The. The real. So I had basically an.2 flares that happened during this time that were really profound. One of them was I went to get a chiropractic adjustment. And while getting the chiropractic adjustment they took like this tool and like chiropractor gonna be like, I know what tool that is. I don't know what it's called, but it's like a scalpel type tool. And we're digging it into. It's. It's like a metal.

[Don]

It's like a metal. It's like a metal, like almost like a hook. But it's not sharp exactly. They were scraping.

[Michelle Shapiro]

They were. It was. It was intended to go into my tissue. So kind of digging into my neck. I walked out of that chiropractic visit mangled. I was done. My heart rate was 160. Sitting.

[Don]

Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I could not get my heart rate down and I couldn't see because I was so dizzy. So I was holding onto walls on the streets and I walked straight to the ER and I said forget it. So this is the fascinating thing where it ties into your world too. There's a combination of syndromes that kind of travel together. One of them is long Covid mast cell activation syndrome, which is the histamine condition. That's what histamines come from, our mast cells. Pots. Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. I'm sure you've worked with clients who have POTS before. And then hypermobility and are. Are together. So I. My neck was extremely hypermobile and I didn't know I had severe upper cervical instability. The nerves in your neck control your heart rate.

[Don]

Right.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So they.

[Don]

It got in this protection mode where. Where it just kind of lock up and then it sent a signal off and hurry through the roof. It's like kind of went into a little bit of a panic.

[Michelle Shapiro]

That's exactly what happened. Yeah. And because our connective tissue, it's so scientifically complicated, but our connective tissue is where our mast cells live. So then you get a weird histamine reaction, hypermobile reaction. So a lot of people wouldn't expect that. Wait. Something that's happening to your neck affects your heart rate. But all of these things, your autonomic nervous system and your nerves that are affected here, if you don't have good stability.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Protecting them and protecting the area were affected. So I. From that moment, I mean that was a scare. That was one of the scariest days of my life because I was like cruel. I was on the cement. I had My sister on the phone, my sister's.

[Don]

When your heart rate jacks up like that and you don't know why it is, you know, you think you're having a heart.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I thought I was having a heart attack, and I had no clue what this was. And also, you know, I, I'm sure even if you've experienced really high heart rate, you just don't know like moving is going to make it worse or sitting. So you feel like you're a little bit paralyzed.

[Don]

You feel caught.

[Michelle Shapiro]

You feel caught. Exactly. So I just made my way to the er and I had the wherewithal when I got there to be like, I have generally low blood pressure. This might be like a POTS thing, and just postural orthotic tachycardia syndrome. I was like, just to let them know. And it helped guide. But I, at that point, I was like, I have to figure out what is going on with me because I cannot live like this. So I had to wear a neck brace for like a year. My clients all, I saw them all virtually, they, I, I didn't have the neck stability after that because the, I'm assuming the joints were loosened or something in my neck because I already have stretchy joints that my head. Even to hold myself up, it was impossible for me to hold myself up. And it's really hard because there's not good musculature to help you there either, or anything like that.

[Don]

No, I, I told. It's funny, I, I used to categorize it a bit differently. I would say hyper flexible. Sure, because it's the same thing. But like, I, I, I would always consider mobility, the combination of flexibility and stability. Absolutely right. So when people come in and they're like, always stretching, and I'm looking at a woman on the floor, and she's in this full split with her nose to the floor, and she's like, I'm tight. I'm like, you're not tight. You're just like, you're obviously not tight.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Exactly.

[Don]

You don't have stability. So that's exactly what was happening with you. And typically what I would do is I, you know, someone who's lacking stability. You got to get those areas strong. So did you have to go through, like, a rehabilitation protocol?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Don]

Okay. So you meet with a pt.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yes. So I ended up meeting virtually with a hypermobility specialist. Her name is Taylor Goldberg. Her name's on Instagram. The hypermobile Cairo. She's beyond incredible. One of the most knowledgeable people in the world. Where she located out of she's, she's out now. She just moved to Florida. I'm glad to get her back on the east coast. She was, she was in Colorado, now she's in Florida. But she works virtually with clients. But. So hypermobility is like you said, it could be a stability issue. It could be a flexibility issue. I'm not flexible. I'm just. I only get the bad stuff. I'm like stiff and sloggy. I don't know. You know, I get all the bad stuff of it. But also that's not true because there's much worse versions of it. But it's a. There's a set of genetic conditions called Ehlers Danlos syndrome, which I'm sure you've heard of eds.

[Don]

I've not heard of that. So that's Danlo. No, I've not.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, so that's a hypermobility. It's a, it's a set of syndromes that is hypermobility from a genetic standpoint or a hereditary Ehlers Danlos. It's not genetic. Basically. This is the confusing thing. Hypermobility can be categorized as a connective tissue disorder. Now, connective tissue, a type of tissue in our body, it lines our joints, blood vessels, bones, and organs. So there's connective tissue all over our body. If you can't build connective tissue, you don't have that stability. So what does help is exactly what you're saying. You need to build muscle, because muscle, it's like, if you're almost like a bobblehead, you got to like put bricks up so that your body stays stable. Because your joints are not able to be stable, your blood vessels are not able to be stable, which also ties in with the blood flow piece of it too. The deal is that if someone is hypermobile, like every single PT in Cairo should be doing a hypermobility assessment on clients, because what a hypermobile person needs to do is not hyperextend, not do yoga and things like that. Right off the bat, they need stability usually. And muscle is.

[Don]

So that's very common. What you're, what you're saying people are just, you know, they're. I think they're kind of gravitating to what interests them, and they're working on things that maybe you don't have to work on. And I think it's this simple. Like if I have a woman that's in, doing one of my programs and she messages me and she's like, well, I'm doing these reach backs and I don't feel it she puts a video up. I'm like, well, you don't need it.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Like, exactly. Don't do that.

[Don]

You're like, Gumby. Like, she's able to. Her thoracic spine is like, you know, can almost do, you know, easily turns 180 degrees. I'm like, you don't need it. Like, we have to find other things. So I, I, it's still shocking to me how many people do not screen. And what, and what, and what a problem that is. So you went.

[Michelle Shapiro]

And you could see that in one second, by the way, too. Yeah, exactly.

[Don]

I mean, I, I'm, now I'm, I'm pretty bad about it now because I'll watch people walk down the street and I'll look at their gate, and I'm just like, I, I, I'm sorry to Mel. Just like, oh, God. This person's hip, their ankle.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I know you're probably thinking about also injuries in 20 years. You're like, oh, my gosh. Like that. You can see almost. I feel like I can see someone's mindset 20 years. I can see what can happen to someone's body and health. Like, I can. You probably can literally look at someone and be like, I see their posture bending over time.

[Don]

It's rough because it doesn't get easier. Right. I think, I think, I think part of the problem is that people, People have a tendency to give up.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Don]

And they're like, well, I'm older. Well, I'm 40 now. And then I'm like, 40. Like, I'm. What are you talking about? Like, is that old? Like, I think it's just, I think, really think. I think it's a mindset and it's an approach. So you, you spent a year in a neck brace. You rehab. This.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I rehabbed. I was lifting weights. I was doing. I mean, I had to start from nothing. And I will tell you, Don, like, this is the story that I tell all of my clients. There was a moment where I. Because anytime I stood up, my heart rate jumped. So that's what happens with pots.

[Don]

Is that scary?

[Michelle Shapiro]

It's scary as hell.

[Don]

It was. You're having a heart attack.

[Michelle Shapiro]

It was the scariest thing I've ever been to. And I'm like a panic attack warrior. Like, a panic attack can't touch me now. I do not get horrific anxiety. I know the deal with anxiety. This was like a whole different ballgame. I was like, for you to feel like with these conditions, with histamine issues, because histamine issues affect your heart rate too. They affect your dizziness, your blood flow. They affect all these, like, what I would say is, like, vital signs.

[Don]

Right.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So it's all things you go to the R for, right? Your heart's going crazy, you have a fever, your respiratory rates change, your blood pressure is changed, all of these things, because it affects your nervous system and your nerves. Control those things. I had this moment when I was realizing what was going on with me after the ER and during that year of rehab where I had to literally lift myself off my computer chair where I was seeing clients from, and then use my computer chair to go to the bathroom. And I remember looking in the mirror at one point when I actually made it to the bathroom and was like, dude, you're not going to make it through this. And then I heard, how old were.

[Don]

You at that time?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Or, like, still late 20s, early 30s. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I'm 30. I'm gonna be 34 this summer.

[Don]

That's rough for a young woman to be saying. I mean, that's.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah. And my husband was like, who is like, the most always healthy, full of energy, happiest, most, even neutral human being on planet Earth was like, what are we gonna do here? Like, this is it. So. Yeah. And I'm not. That's not my vibe. I am, like, tough as nails. And I was like, michelle, I just don't think you're gonna make it through this. And then another part of me came out and was like, like, don't ever say that again. Because with these. If you're in that mindset and these are conditions that are controlled by your nervous system, they are all of them. The POTS is a form of dysautonomic function. It's a dysfunction of your autonomic nervous system. I was like, you can never afford to say that again. And that's when my life changed, is when I said, you're going to find every answer to these problems that are nowhere. No functional medicine doctors. All my best friends are functional medicine doctors. Naturopathic physicians, like, functional dietitians. No one knew what to do because there's actually a relationship between long Covid and mast cells as well. So the histamine issues everyone's having is a lot of the times from long covet. So this is new. The. The huge influx of these conditions. The conditions are not new, but the amount of people experiencing them is new. And practitioners don't know what to do. Like, you know, they. People feel worse if they exercise. You feel worse if you eat healthy foods, you feel worse in the sun. All the Things that are healing can make people with histamine issues feel worse. So I felt very backed into a corner. But it was that mindset shift on, and I mean this, that changed everything for me. And I force my clients into that. I'm like, you can't afford to victim yourself in these situations, even though the symptoms are horrible. Like, the symptoms are so bad you can't afford it. You just cannot afford it.

[Don]

And it's amazing. The people who make the most change in their lives are the ones that go and attack that mental side of it first. Like, understanding what do I have to go through? What am I going to have to do to really make this change? And when you're kind of half it. That's why I always tell people. I'm like, don't, like, make sure there's not, like, 100 cooks in the kitchen. Like, if you're going to go, commit to Michelle. Commit to Michelle.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Exactly.

[Don]

And just listen to her exhaust that. I believe you can be working with her your entire life, but if. If in three, four years, you move on for whatever, fine. But commit in that period of time. The mistake that most people make is that they're so easily influenced by a lot of the stuff that they're seeing on the web, and rightfully so. It's not their profession. It's not what they do when they have huge following. It's like, oh, well, this person's saying this. What do you think? What were some of the things then that you had to change nutritionally? What do you feel like? And I'm not asking you to give your whole recipe. Talk about some of the things that you slowly started implementing in that you were like, oh, wow. This is because I want to be clear, what's worked for you might work differently for someone else. So I do believe that if you're having these issues, you need to call someone like Michelle and work with her or her team. But, like, give us a little. Give us some examples.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So, first of all, the first huge nutritional shift I made was obviously in the first part of my story. I had to go from being vegan after 10 years to not being vegan. That was essential for me for every.

[Don]

Why were you vegan? Did you think it was healthy or was it more for.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah, you know what? Like, when I was in college, you know, it was very hot and cool. Then it was like, very. The thing to do. What actually happened was my sister said she was becoming vegan, and then I was like, I could bet I can do it longer than you. Just for no reason. And then I really think I use veganism as a shield for my eating disorder. Like, I was like, oh, I'm, I actually can't eat that because I'm vegan. But it's like, no, you're just not eating. That's what's actually happening. Which is very common, which is why in like eating disorder facilities you cannot have any dietary restrictions because it's, it's, it was a little bit of a shield for me, honestly. But then at some point when I did all these lab tests about for my anxiety, I was like, oh, you have literally no, like no vitamin B. I, I had like, like, I think my vitamin B was like 100 something. Like it was so, so low. All my nutrients were low. And then I was supplementing and I, I just could not get enough. I had to start getting it from food. And that radically changed my anxiety in my life, during this period of my life, in my health. So this is the weirdest thing, Don. Foods that are high in histamines and histamines again can cause system wide, very odd reactions from every single system in your body. Pain, dizziness, hives, fevers, blood flow changes, like anything. They're very, they're a very potent like neurotransmitter, like chemical. They're not neurotransmitters, but they're chemical messengers. But the foods that are high in histamines are very healthy. So it's fermented foods. Citrus. Like, like if you think of like again fermented foods, like if you go to any gut health doctor, like any of those foods they tell you to eat citrus foods, avocado, spinach, tomatoes, anything like tomato, you could have a bad.

[Don]

Reaction to that, right. Depending on, oh, I have clients who've.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Eaten a tomato and ended up in the hospital. Wow. The next day with severe, severe, almost anaphylaxis basically. And it's not an allergy to the food, it's that the food itself is high in histamines and histamine.

[Don]

You're not saying these are unhealthy foods. Oh no. You're just saying that like these people had really bad reactions.

[Michelle Shapiro]

So if your body is high in histamines because your mast cells are sending out this histamine signal, then you eating high histamine foods, it could actually make you sick.

[Don]

Which is so weird on the fire that you're trying to put out, right?

[Michelle Shapiro]

I guess. If. So it's almost like if someone's really bloated and they eat a high fiber food, high fiber Foods are good for you, but not if you're already bloated kind of. Right, right. So that's the complicated thing about all this, is like, lemons are really high in histamines. Like, lemons are some of the healthiest foods in the world. Like, I would love to tell my clients to drink lemon water in the morning. So what I started to do was take some of those foods out, even though they were healthy, but because I was reacting to them, it's a really hard diet, a low histamine diet. So it's not something I ever recommend long term. And it's not healthy because you're cutting out so many really, really healthy foods. It's a very weird thing that you have to do, eat a little bit, like, odd to bring the symptoms down.

[Don]

But it's then when the symptoms come down, do you feel like in a way that's kind of resetting things for you? Because now you start kind of trying to reentry. Almost like an elimination diet. Right. Is that what you ended up doing?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yes, absolutely. I can eat any high estimate food now, except for pickles, which is painful. As a Jew, it's painful that I can't eat pickles. It's hurtful. It's culturally hurtful. You know what I mean? I can't do it. But that's the one food that I haven't been able. Because they're very. There's vinegar, they're fermented, they're aged. So, yeah, it's a little bit hard.

[Don]

Do you eat like, kraut, kimchi, stuff like that?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Absolutely. Yep. I eat it all the time now. Everything's back, literally, except for pickles. Again, very hurtful. But I can eat any food. But it took a long time. So you can also take supplements that help to, like, break down histamines. But what people are missing, and you are kind of pointing out very intense, like, intuitively, is that just eating a low histamine diet doesn't fix the problem, but it can reduce the symptoms enough where then your body can start healing itself, itself. So it is important. Like, again, I have clients who eat. They're like, michelle, what did I even eat wrong? What? I eat chocolate. Like a bite of chocolate. And I'm like, yeah, your. Your stomach, you might have diarrhea for six days from that. That's how severe.

[Don]

It's so difficult for people to be able to pinpoint that stuff because you're consuming foods that you know are healthy. They've been promoted as being healthy. And that's not where you would normally say, well, the X is on that. It's not like they're eating, you know, fried chicken fingers. Where it's like, okay, well, that was clearly it. Like, you're talking about tomatoes, you're talking about the healthiest foods in the world. Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Spinach.

[Don]

Yeah. Spinach. Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Bananas. Like dark chocolate. Like, these are. Yet this is where it's. It's such a complicated conversation, Don, because these are not unhealthy by any means. It's like your body is playing checkers when it needs to be playing chess. It's just a different game that you have to learn, but it has to be temporary. You know, my client plans, the ones that we write, the. I. I still call them battle plans. So corny.

[Don]

I love it.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Exactly. So corny. But I. My idea of battle is we're going to literally strategize and target from every angle. They're usually 20 pages long. Like my cl. They're like, like most of the plans are like 16 to 20 pages. They're handwritten 16 to 20 pages. Because I also want clients to have like, what I call, like a flare pack. So, like, this symptom happens, you come back to this. It's different for every person. One person could have blood flow issues and it could be that, like, their heart rate's too high and one, their heart rate's too low. Opposite recommendations. One person, they eat a food that triggers them and that caused the histamine issue. So the minutiae of knowing each person's body is so essential, but it's mostly about us learning our own bodies. My clients learning their own bodies. Like, you have to know yourself in order to heal. And I think most people don't realize that, like you, your long term clients, you know, like every inch of what's going on in their lives. I mean, you have to. It's like, yeah, exactly.

[Don]

You know, but still, it's. There's. There's things that change and flare up and.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Exactly.

[Don]

You know, if I'm working with someone and it's been 15 years and I'm still working with them, you got to. It gets different 100. And their priorities change and things just change. And that's the beauty of it. But that's also why I think so many people are confused out there, because they're like, well, this worked for me and I got a great response off of this. Why isn't it now? And the human body not to pivot? Because there's like, there's a hundred different ideas that we can talk about. But you mentioned long Covid a couple of times. And I know there's so much more we can discuss in reference to histamines, but I think this was more of just like an eye opener for people to say, hey, I might have those problems. Maybe Michelle or her team. Someone I should.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I can't believe we're talking about histamines. I thought we're going to do weight loss. I can't believe we're on Don's pod and we're talking histamines. It's so cool to talk about it with like a fitness professional. It's so sick.

[Don]

I think it's fascinating. I think probably more it makes you emotional. Yeah. But more people are having these issues and I think this is what the weight loss piece, the macro piece, it's.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Like how many times it's like, yeah.

[Don]

But like, you know, and I'll continue to talk about that, but I think you're. That is part of your strong suit. I'm not. But I think now you're becoming this person that, like you said, a lot of doctors don't want to deal with that because it's really hard. Long Covid. Right. What are some of the things that you found as an after. I mean, long covet. It's. It is one big after effect. Right. That's what it is. But what is it? What is it really?

[Michelle Shapiro]

So fascinating. So I just want to reference one study and I'm going to tell you where it was out of because I'm forgetting right now. But they found that. That in this study that the quality of life for those with Long Covid was often lower than those with stage four cancer.

[Don]

Wow.

[Michelle Shapiro]

They were less able to work. They had. They were in more pain and discomfort. And I think part of that is because it's. If you say to someone, I'm on chemotherapy and I have stage four cancer, people instantly understand that you do not feel well. If you have long covet and you're like, I have this weird, mysterious condition. People are like, you're faking it or you're a hypochondriac.

[Don]

It doesn't really exist. Yeah.

[Michelle Shapiro]

It's isolated. And also the symptoms are very drastic. So Covid happened. Covid itself was a gnarly, gnarly virus. The vaccines a lot of people reacted to. The virus itself, a lot of people reacted to that did not explain why people were still sick with fatigue, dizziness. All these symptoms three months later didn't make sense. People had severe insomnia. Like the. Yes, there's issues with, like, smell and sense of smell and things that was, like, more related to the virus itself. So there's the virus itself, both, but then there's like this kind of cascade that happens after. And that's what no one seems to seem to understand because they were like, if you get the flu. If you got the flu, Don, you'd feel horrible for a week. It has nothing to do with three months later. It's like, yeah, maybe you would feel bad mono or something like that. But flus, like respiratory illness, did not usually cause that. So Covid caused this reaction. We have a type of cell, an immune cell, in our body called mast cells. So I want you to picture, like, there's all over our body, there's these mast cells. They have basically things will attach to the outside of them or attack, and then they will release compounds from the inside. It's like, oh, I have to send this to help with the body. So Covid and mast cells have a perfect relationship. So there's this type of receptor called the ACE2 receptor outside of mast cells. Covid attaches to it. And then mast cells send out their compounds. They send out 1200 different compounds. One of the main ones is histamines. And mast cells I think of as like the guards on the tower of our body. So they're like, looking around, making sure everything's okay. And they are very involved in both the nervous system and the immune system, and they interface there. So they can react from a nervous system threat or from an immune system threat. So they basically looked at Covid. They got attacked because of COVID and they were like, that can never happen again. So what your body does, it puts itself in an immune state where it's constantly activated. And that's what mast cell activation syndrome is. I have never seen someone in my practice this ever who has long covet and doesn't have MCAs. Never. I've never seen one client. So there's a couple different reasons why I think long Covid and MCAS are related. And the reason why long Covid keeps happening is because your immune system is so freaked out from COVID because it was such an attack and it was so specific with the mast cells that it keeps going.

[Don]

Is it correctable?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Absolutely. I. I absolutely believe so now.

[Don]

Yeah. But. But it's not. But I love how you just put that. Thank you for saying it that way. You said, I believe so.

[Michelle Shapiro]

I do.

[Don]

There's still. And there's. That's conclusive. And this is. This is the part of Our industry, where I want to hear your opinion.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Don]

And I am not going to. I think, you know, we put a disclaimer on it. It's okay to say that like through your.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Science is not clear cut. That's not what science says.

[Don]

No, I want to hear, I want to hear you say, listen, research is not conclusive. So I'm giving you my opinion and I think we should be allowed to say that. So what's your opinion on that?

[Michelle Shapiro]

I. I believe you can improve your baseline health and bring your immune system back into coherence and balance and then go on to live basically the same life. But be cautious that flares can happen. That's what I would say. It's all about increasing the baseline, reducing the flares. So in myself, for instance, I can do anything except for eat pickle. Pickles. As I told you, I can travel anywhere. I can sit up for millions of hours. I can do anything. I don't get dizziness, I don't get histamine symptoms. There's like one day in my cycle a month where I'm like, all right, I'll take a Zyrtec, but I'm not on anti histamines at all anymore. And I had a very severe case of long Covid. I don't have any symptoms anymore, but if I went on a 15 hour flight or something and then I sat in the heat, yeah, I would feel it. Exactly.

[Don]

So some of the symptoms for people to start saying, well, maybe I, I have this. What are some of the symptoms?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Dizziness, heart rate issues, insomnia. Severe fatigue is probably one of the.

[Don]

Most characteristics similar to, similar to the histamine.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Because it is the histamine. It is the histamine that's the secret. It is the histamine that is the secret. I think long covet is generally categorized by the fatigue. That's the leading symptom. Okay, but it's like just. I would call long Covid. When the systems in your body go haywire, it's like that's. And it's like it'll happen usually like a week or two after your Covid. Like normal sickness happens, then something else kicks on. That's when your immune system and nervous system kick on. It's an after effect. And then you live in this, like, different symptoms. A lot of people experience weight loss or weight gain, muscle loss, appetite changes as well. But it is this, this extremely aggressive immune state. It's very nutrient depleting because your body's constantly on, so to speak, which leaves people feeling Tremendously fatigued. And I noticed there's, like, that opposite sleep pattern that happens where people will start to be really tired during the day and not be able to sleep at night too.

[Don]

So it's fitting. It's fitting that we at least brought it up, considering the whole talk was on histamine. I mean, this is something where someone's having that. They're all very intertwined.

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yes. Okay. I think people, like, like, are starting to know because it's such a distinct terror. I have to be honest. It's torture. It really is. Like, it's the worst symptoms altogether that people are starting to recognize, oh, my body feels really different than it used to, and I can't understand where it's coming from. I would start looking at histamines and long Covid.

[Don]

Do you offer, like. Do you offer, like, a free quiz or something like that?

[Michelle Shapiro]

Yes, I have a quiz. And it is, are you living in a highly sensitive body, which is like. Like, my definition for highly sensitive body is like, do you have MKS pots? Long Covid or hypermobility? Okay, Something will be picked up from that. So I'll give you a quiz.

[Don]

Yeah, that's something. We're. We're. Chris, I'd love to maybe in this. In our link. Maybe Ty take the quiz. For most people who are curious, I think that'd be a great way. So this was special today. This is. It's always. It's always great connecting with you. I loved it. But I. I want to get you on again, and I'd like to cover. We gotta cover some of the GLP ones. We have to cover weight loss, anxiety.

[Michelle Shapiro]

We gotta go deeper.

[Don]

We can go deeper in anxiety. I think there's some. And I think just today was important because I wanted people to get familiar on you.

[Michelle Shapiro]

This is Don. This is what I have to say about you.

[Don]

Thank you.

[Michelle Shapiro]

That he said thank you. He said thank you prophylactically. But I think you. Even more than the energy you put online, which is such. You're the. One of the most positive and kind and warm people in the world, but you're also willing to, like, get really deep and go there. And it's so. It's so important and so refreshing and you've just. I. You influenced so many people's lives so much, and I just have to say, like, it's such a joy to have you in my life. And I'm. I'm just very proud to know you and I'm so grateful to be here. Yeah, exactly. I mean it. Love you. Thank you. The views, information or opinions expressed in the series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Chip and Joanna. Gains by no Audio nor Magnolia this.

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