EP9 – Stage 2 GAPS and Allergies, Illnesses and Juggling Cats! OH MY!
Feeling frustrated with persistent nasal congestion, headaches, and joint pain, I embarked on a personal journey to uncover the culprits behind my symptoms on day seven of my cleanse. Could it be the flatbread I enjoyed from a Persian restaurant or perhaps the dusty guest room where my husband works? Join me as I share how I turned to gentle yoga, devotions, and a homemade herbal tea to find relief and embrace the body’s natural detoxification process.
Discover a fresh perspective on common illnesses as opportunities for the body to restore balance. We’ll explore how adopting supportive methods—like herbs, proper nutrition, and healthy lifestyle habits—can enhance our healing journey, rather than masking symptoms with quick fixes.
Plus are dogs smarter than cats? Listen to a humorous tale about my cats’ intelligence challenging the stereotype that dogs are the smarter species.
Join me for an engaging and enlightening conversation that blends personal experiences with thought-provoking insights!
Transcript
Sharise Parviz: 0:01
Good morning. So today is my seventh day on my cleanse and my at-home reset, and if you listened yesterday I would have. I’ll just recap a little bit about yesterday. Yesterday, I woke up feeling awful. I didn’t sleep last night. I was nasally and sniffly and sneezy and my eyes watering and, uh, headachy and joints started hurting and I had hot flashes at night. I was miserable and I’ve been fine all day long, and so I attributed it to the um, the flatbread I had that my husband brought home from the Persian restaurant. So I figured that was the only thing I did wrong. Well, not wrong, I shouldn’t say wrong. That’s the only thing I did different. Let’s not judge it, let’s just see it is what it is, right. I’m not going to judge myself for it. Right, we talked about that. So no judgment, just awareness. And so I decided okay, this must be why I just felt like absolute garbage. And so I did yesterday.
Sharise Parviz: 1:10
What did I do to feel good today, because I feel great again this morning? Well, yesterday I got up and I did. I decided just kind of take it easy and just, you know, ask myself and tune in hey, what do I feel like doing today? Let’s just take it easy and don’t push anything right. This is my retreat there’s no push, there’s no rush. So I did decide to do my yoga and which was wonderful my yoga, my devotions and um, because I really opened up my sinuses, the circulation right. When you get your circulation, your blood moving, I could breathe. It was wonderful. So I was able to breathe for a little while, but it felt real good just to do a real relaxing yoga practice.Sharise Parviz: 1:54
And then um, and that opened me up, um and it, my headache went away. I drank lots of water lemon water in the morning and uh, but unfortunately the nasally sniffly came back. Come on, baby, my baby is, she’s so short and squatty and she’s so cute, but she’ll meow at me when I start walking too far ahead of her. Come on, come on, darling, let’s go walking. Um. So, anyway, about an hour after I got did my yoga, the nasally came back. Now the headache still left. Um, I didn’t. The headache didn’t return, but the sniffles and watery eyes and being all nasally came back. And I’m feeling a lot less.
Sharise Parviz: 2:32
Hopefully, I sound less nasally, I feel like I can breathe better, I’m not having to take as many breaths to talk, which is kind of nice Actually it’s very nice, not just kind of nice and so so I decided, okay, I made some. So what I did is I made some histamine. I have a herbal combination that I make a tincture with or I make a herbal tea. I decided to do an herbal tea and it’s a histamine herbal tea with different herbs in it that help to, you know, navigate your way through a histamine response, whether it’s allergies or detoxing or what have you Right, and I thought about it.
Sharise Parviz: 3:08
Oh, you know, maybe I’m so nasally because I’ve been nasally for about the past two weeks when I started getting nasally, when I cleaned up our one, our guest bedroom that had all of our stuff in it. You know, I think I mentioned that our house was under complete destruction. I mean reconstruction, not destruction, but of course, you know, to reconstruct sometimes you have to destruct. So anyway, um, but all of our, a lot of stuff not all of our stuff, but all a lot of my stuff was put into our guest bedroom. So I was finally able to pull things out and put things away and of course it was really dusty in there. So I thought, huh, I wonder if, uh, because my husband’s also using it as an office space right now because he’s building his office in the um, towards the back of the house, near our um. What do they call it? I keep saying workhouse. It’s not a workhouse, it’s not a work shed, workshop, that’s what it is. So he’s putting his office out there. In the meantime, he was using the restroom, so it was dusty, and so, as I was cleaning it, I just started sneezing and sneezing and sneezing.
Sharise Parviz: 4:09
Unfortunately, though, it just kept for the past two weeks sneezing and sneezing and sneezing, and it started clearing up this this week. It was still pretty sneezy and nasally, um, but today I feel pretty good and I think it’s from the herbal tea, and one of the big things in the herbal tea is it has Brigham tea in it, which Brigham is fantastic for allergies or histamine responses, right, um. But you know, I think well, okay, maybe it is allergies, you know, because it is kind of high pollen. I’ve been getting the notifications. It’s high pollen. But here’s the thing about allergies. You know allergies, and it could be a food allergy, but in this case, even just a sinus allergy. Yes, it could be something that you just breathe in, but usually if it’s and I use the neti pot to clean out. Usually, if it’s just something that you just breathe in, it’s not going to last. You can neti, pot it out, blow it out, sneeze it out.
Sharise Parviz: 5:02
That sneezing and blowing and runny nose and runny eyes, and all of that is part of the detoxification process that your body uses to get rid of stuff, just like peeing and pooing and all of that breathing, exhaling and sneezing it’s all. Even vomiting, right? All of these things. We don’t want to necessarily think of them as illnesses. Vomiting, right? All of these things, you know, we don’t want to necessarily think of them as illnesses. What we want to think of is oh, that’s my body responding to something I’ve been exposed to, not necessarily an infection, I won’t get into that now, but I personally don’t even know if I believe in infections anymore. Anyway, but that’s for a whole nother conversation.
Sharise Parviz: 5:42
But whatever you may be exposed to you know chemicals or toxins or pollen, whatever you know your body knows how to get rid of that stuff. But if it’s lasting, then it’s may not be about well, maybe quote unquote allergies, but it’s really just a symptom. Why is your body responding by sneezing and watering eyes and, you know, runny nose? What is your body trying to get rid of. And a lot of times, when you start to have those responses, it could be that your body has some toxins in it and it can’t get rid of them necessarily because your liver or your bowels or something are congested, so it’s coming out through your sinuses. Now it could be something that’s in your sinuses, but again, if it lasts longer than just you know blowing your nose or you know doing a neti pot, but it continues over and over again, then I find that it’s good to check in and do an overall detox, which is what I’m doing and helping to support the liver, helping to support the bowels, making sure you’re moving the bowels at least once a day, if not twice, you know, and some people do three, but at least once once a day. A nice good bowel movement, or doing an enema to help to stimulate the bowels as well as stimulate the liver.
Sharise Parviz: 7:00
Anyway, so an allergy isn’t necessarily the problem, right? It’s like what is the response? The allergic quote. Unquote. Allergic response. Why is it responding? What’s going on inside the body that it’s trying to cleanse from? And when you kind of shift your thinking and go oh, I’m sick because I have the sneeze or I have a fever or I have an upset stomach or I’m vomiting and all that, instead of that being looked at as being a sickness. Yes, I see you, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.
Sharise Parviz: 7:29
We look at that, we change our paradigm on that and we look at this as a healing process that your body is using to bring your body back to balance. And that is my new way of looking at it. You know, when I started getting into health and I got all the certifications and did my traditional naturopath training and my nutritionist training and so on and so forth, you know it’s the same way of thinking oh, you’re sick here, take this, and instead of it being an antibiotic, you’re taking some type of herbs that are antibiotics You’re taking. You’re looking at the antibiotic. You’re taking some type of herbs that are antibiotics You’re taking. You’re, you’re, you’re looking at the world. You’re looking at health in the same way that the allopathic medicine, that the allopathic doctors are looking at it.
Sharise Parviz: 8:12
Oh, you have a symptom, take this drug. You have a symptom, take this drug without really getting to. But why do we have this symptom, right? Or it’s not a symptom? Oh, you have the flu. That’s a disease, right, that’s a sickness. Not disease necessarily, but a sickness. So you need to have your flu vaccine or you need to have your, take this medication or whatever, right, even for the flu, which I don’t know what you give for the flu, right, they have never found the cure for the common cold or the flu, but anyway, it doesn’t mean that the doctor doesn’t prescribe you something anyway.
Sharise Parviz: 8:46
But the point is is when you shift your thinking and go, okay, this isn’t, you know, the flu, the fever, the whatever stomach ache, the diarrhea, whatever kind of quote, unquote flu that you may have, that’s not the illness. That’s the body responding to exposure to something. When you look at that as your way, your body is handling it because your body is your friend and it is your body knows what to do. Your body wants to be healthy. Your body wants to be whole. Your body wants to work for you, right, it’s your friend. It wants to work for you. It wants you to do the things that you love doing. It wants you to go for walks, it wants you to play with your kids or your grandkids. It wants you to do all the things that you want to do. It’s there to serve you, right? So we need to give it what it needs to serve us. So it knows how it’s a wise.
Sharise Parviz: 9:36
Our bodies are so wise. Our bodies know how to heal themselves if given the right building blocks through nutrition, through our lifestyle habits, through removing toxic you know skincare, personal care products or household products or whatever. You know exposure to airborne, you know toxins and food and water all that. When we give it what it needs and take away what poisons it, then the body goes yeah, I know what to do, I know how to fix this right. And how does it fix it? Through sneezing, through coughing, through vomiting, through diarrhea, through all these things. That doesn’t mean that we don’t support the body while it’s going through those things. Right, we do. Right, we drink fluids If we have diarrhea. Well, they drink more fluids. If we have too much diarrhea, if it’s getting too much, then maybe we learn to slow it down, you know, through some herbs or other like binders that we can use.
Sharise Parviz: 10:36
But the goal is to let it run its course without interference. Support. Support means oh, my body, for instance. Support is I have a fever, okay, and I’m fine. I’m not lethargic, nothing dangerous. I have a fever. So interference would be I’m going to take something to bring the fever down like Tylenol, or it doesn’t even have to be just a drug, it could be an herb that actually stops the fever, right. So I can take that’s interference, because you’re stopping the body from doing what it’s meant to do, what it needs to do.
Sharise Parviz: 11:11
And unfortunately, what ends up happening when we stop the body from doing what it’s supposed to do, allowing the body to heal itself, then we, we may stop the symptoms, but the illness is still there. Whatever the root cause that’s causing these our bodies to react with these symptoms, that’s still in us. And now we’ve just pushed it further away, right, we’re kind of ignoring it, kind of sweeping it under the rug, because all we’re doing is we’re just alleviating the symptoms. So that’s interference, okay. But support is like okay, I have a fever, what can I do to support the process my body is going through to detoxify? I may use an herb that helps the fever to that. That accelerates the fever, gets it, moves it faster through the system, right, so that if the fever becomes more productive, so I allow the fever to happen, I even help accelerate the fever, not necessarily raise the fever, but accelerate it to move it a little faster, to support it to happen, and then it’s done. So that’s supporting versus interfering, and so supporting ourselves is fine through these symptoms Okay, I’m not going to call them illnesses, because they’re symptoms of a deeper cause but interfering can just make that deeper cause go back even deeper and go into our tissues and into our organs and then maybe even become a, you know, a more difficult, maybe become disease.
Sharise Parviz: 12:45
Let’s just say, really, so now we go from maybe, you know, being exposed to something that our body can easily get rid of through, you know, fever, or through diarrhea or vomiting or what have you, you know, in a few days, and we stop it, we interfere it, we don’t allow the vomit, don’t allow the fever, don’t allow the diarrhea, right, so now we’ve stopped the process of the body cleaning itself. Now, whatever that root cause it’s making that our body is fighting just gets pushed deeper into our tissues, into our system, which, if it’s not able to be cleaned out, we’re just building up our toxic load. And then what happens? Our body has to try to fight it again, but maybe the next time it’s fighting now it brings up a deeper, a more serious disease. Now it has to work twice as hard to clean right. And then we keep pushing it back, taking more antibiotics, et cetera. Dah, dah, dah, dah dah. I think you get the idea.
Sharise Parviz: 13:36
I don’t need to beat a dead horse, but I know I shouldn’t use let’s use that expression, but anyway, anyway. So that’s the idea. So when I use my herbal tea, it’s not stopping my, it’s supporting the. If I’m having an antihistamine, a histamine response, excuse me, if I’m having a histamine response, for whatever reason, something I got exposed to or something my diet can cause a histamine response, you know something? Right, because there’s congestion in the liver, then my herbal teas are there to help, just to support it. Right, not stop the runny nose, but just help support it.
Sharise Parviz: 14:15
So yesterday I sipped on my herbal teas all day and today, well, I can breathe better, I can speak better, I don’t sound or feel as nasally, so all of that was great. So I feel pretty good about that. And then this morning I got up and I did some yoga and I feel fantastic. I slept through the night and no hot flashes, no headaches, and I’m back into my groove, feeling good. Anyway, I just kind of went on a rant right there. Sorry about that, I wasn’t expecting that. That just kind of came out. So but what I did want to chat with you today about is I am moving on to stage two.
Sharise Parviz: 14:51
So, as um, I briefly just been going over what I’ve done. So I’ve done the liquid gaps fast, which is just liquids from the gaps diet and protocol, and then I moved into stage one, which was then adding in solids into my stocks and having soups and then, of course, adding some garlic into my soups or stocks. So eating more solids. And then now in stage two, and I’m going to be adding in. So continuing the stocks, continuing the blended soups, eating the vegetables, eating the meat from the stock, and now I start adding in stage two, adding in egg yolks and then eventually I’m going to add in the egg whites, adding in the whole egg. I start to, instead of just soups and stocks. I start to make stews and I start to make casseroles and basically they’re just that’s less water, and you’re eating more meat and less water, more solids and less water. And I actually am going to do gravlax, which is like a fermented fish, which is yummy I love gravlax, oh my gosh, it’s so good and introducing ghee. And that is basically stage two right Now.
Sharise Parviz: 16:08
I’ve been on GAPS a long time. So I am purposely going through it as a new beginner on GAPS and I’ve gone back through intro and forward. I’ve done this a few different times but because I don’t really have any health issues other than what I’m going through right now, meaning digestive issues. I don’t have any issues like that. I usually do a full GABs, nourishing traditions, and when I go back and I’ll do stage one, I don’t go as strict as, say, someone who’s brand new to the program, and that’s because I, my body is already able to tolerate a lot of these foods. So I modify. But this time I thought I am because I haven’t been feeling well and because I’m tired and run down or I have been prior to this week and I decided I’m going to go just like a beginner, immediately just start right at stage one, or liquid gaps first and then stage one, just like a beginner, just like doing it for the first time. So that is what I’m doing.
Sharise Parviz: 17:12
So what else did I want to share with you? Oh, I know what I wanted to share with you. They were so funny, so I was. I don’t know if you know who Tom Dr Tom Cowan is. If you are anywhere, I would definitely look him up. He is phenomenal. He has a new clinic called the New Biology Clinic and I studied with him, I took his curriculum with him and he is in the camp I want to say camp, but if you haven’t heard maybe you have of the terrain versus the germ theory and I’m not going to go into all that right now. But he certainly is more on the terrain theory, meaning there are no such things as viruses.
Sharise Parviz: 17:49
They have not been, let’s just say they have not actually been proven to exist. That may be a surprise, but they actually have never isolated. They may call it isolation, but it’s not the actual definition of isolation. They have never been able to isolate and see a virus. That’s the truth. That is the truth, that is factual, that is in the records, that is in the studies Never isolated. Isolating means seeing one thing apart from all other things Never done it, ever with any virus. Shocking, and it’s true. Now, that doesn’t mean it exists, I don’t know, but they’ve never been able to isolate it, so they haven’t been able to identify it. Anyway, I can get into that later on, but if you really want to dig in deeper with that, I would certainly check out Dr Tom Cowan.
Sharise Parviz: 18:38
So he was talking, he does a weekly webinar and he was discussing cats. I guess there was some study and I didn’t look up the studies. So take this for what it’s worth what I’m saying that cats were not very smart, right, they didn’t know your, they didn’t know their owners and they really weren’t very smart. And I have two cats and I’ve had cats my whole life and dogs too, but mainly cats, but you know, they just weren’t smart, not as smart as dogs, certainly, right. And I guess again, I’m taking this from what Tom said what I understand Tom to have said is that the way they decided that cats could not recognize people is, I guess, they played a voice recording of their owner and they didn’t respond. Well, that’s because they’re actually too smart for that, but okay, played a voice recording of their owner and they didn’t respond. Well, that’s because they’re actually too smart for that, but OK, so because they didn’t respond and a dog did respond, I guess this is what happened Then. Dogs are smarter than cats, ok, well, I can tell you firsthand that cats if you’re a cat owner, you know cats are are very smart, very intelligent In fact. That’s why they probably didn’t recognize or look or act on or respond to the vocal recording because they’re like. I know that’s not them. I know who you’re trying to fool.
Sharise Parviz: 19:58
So anyway, I wanted to share what my cat did. So we have two cats. I have one who thinks she is the queen, and she really thinks she’s the queen. And we adopted all of our animals we’ve always adopted either Humane Society or from a rescue and she’s always been very jealous. I didn’t realize how jealous, but even when I had my grandbaby here for a few months, my daughter stayed with us with our grandbaby. If I talked to my little grandbaby, or even when they left, I would talk to my grandbaby on the phone. She would hear my voice would change you know how you talk to babies, right and she would come and nip me on my ankle because she was jealous, and she was jealous of the little one when they were here staying with us and she didn’t hurt or anything, but she would just kind of, if I was talking to her you know talking to my grandbaby then cat we call her cat with a K, you know, so we could be original and she would jump on my other side and start kind of like nipping at my elbow or my shoulder to pay attention to her. I mean, she never heard the grandbaby, but it was just me and it was just unbelievable. I was like, oh my gosh, you’re so jealous, well.
Sharise Parviz: 21:11
Well, when we moved on our property we had a little stray, this cute little uh, we call her bonnie blue and little grayish blue kitty and we just we took her in. Well, that was a mistake, no, not really, but well, it was a mistake for cat. Cat was furious. Kat would not let this, let Bonnie be, ever at all, never.Sharise Parviz: 21:33
It’s been now two years and I cannot keep them in the same room together. I have to separate them either by rooms, I have to feed them at separate times, I have to keep them in separate crates. They do use the same litter box, but I mean, and it’s not Bonnie, bonnie is just as friendly as can be, but Kat just will not have it. She will not have some other cat in the house taking up her space. She’s just decided that she wouldn’t do it. So Kat stays out at night for us, um, and Bonnie goes in her crate. Or sometimes Bonnie goes into the upstairs guest bedroom and cat. Usually we let her stay up. I do that because that way I know she’s used the bathroom so in the morning I can put her, I can lock her in her crate, or put her in the other bedroom and feed her and let Bonnie out so she can roam. I mean, it’s just, it’s a juggling act, I mean I’m playing cats all day long. It’s ridiculous. Okay, so usually cat will sleep with us.
Sharise Parviz: 22:31
Well, and then I ended up starting to not let her sleep with me because I wasn’t rest sleeping. So I started to put her out, well, last night, because she would start waking me up, sometimes at one, 30 in the morning, two, three, and I get up at four and I’m like Hey’s not time, it’s not time to eat yet. So anyway, last night she got um, she was allowed to sleep in our bedroom. I think we just forgot to close the door and put her out, and so she’s sleeping with us, which was fine. She I’d slept all night. But at about 3, 45 she started meowing at me, meowing at me. I’m like you know what? I got 15 minutes, cat, wait, I’ll catch you at four, I’ll be up at four, not now, right. So I just ignored her. I’ll, you know, pushed her off a little bit, not pushed her hard, but, you know, nudged her off the bed, saying go on, you know anyway. So I let her out and I said, well, I’ll just shut the door. So I shut the door. I thought I’m just gonna stay 15 more minutes.
Sharise Parviz: 23:28
So I’m laying in bed. My husband and I are in bed. He’s sound asleep and I hear her and she’s literally banging her food bowl against this. It’s in a metal base. She’s banging her stainless steel food bowl in the base to wake me up. There’s no food in it. She knows there’s no food in it, there’s. I only feed them twice a day and only enough for them to eat at that meal and or a little bit later. Right, and she’s banging her dish inside her base. I was just dying.
Sharise Parviz: 24:03
I woke up and I just I couldn’t help but laugh. And my husband woke up and we both started laughing. So don’t tell me that cats are dumb. They are not dumb. They are so smart and they know if something doesn’t work, they try something else. Anyway, I just thought I’d share that funny story because I just I don’t know. Cats are just the coolest. I mean, I love dogs too. We had a beautiful Great Dane that I absolutely oh, she was my heart precious thing and so good with kids. But cats, ah, you know, they’re just, they’re just great animals. I mean, I just love my cats, all right. Well, that’s it. I’ll let you know how it goes. Um, I may not uh, post, and for another few days, and uh, when I do, I will send it out, and I think that’s it. Have a beautiful day and enjoy. Bye-bye.