Nutrition with Judy

You've changed your diet.

You've taken the supplements.

You've done everything you were told would help.

So why do you still feel stuck?

For many people, the missing piece isn't another protocol; it's a nervous system that's been stuck in survival mode for far too long.

When your body doesn't feel safe, it prioritizes protecting you over repairing you. That can affect everything from your energy and digestion to your sleep, immune system, and ability to recover.
The good news? Your nervous system can learn a new pattern.

That's exactly why we created the Wholeness Method Cohort: to help you move beyond survival and build the foundation for lasting healing.

✨ Learn more about the Wholeness Method here: https://wholenessmethod.co/cohort/

Histamine reactions are not always driven by food alone.

Histamine is a chemical messenger that works across the brain, immune system, digestive tract, circulation, and other tissues. This means a person’s nervous-system state may influence how readily histamine is released and how strongly the body responds to it.

When the body remains in a state of high alert, a self-reinforcing pattern can develop:

• The brain senses a threat
• Mast cells release histamine
• The resulting symptoms feel alarming
• The brain interprets those symptoms as more danger

This feedback loop may help explain why histamine reactions can feel intense, unpredictable, or disproportionate to the apparent trigger.

Symptoms can also extend far beyond what many people recognize as a typical food reaction. Histamine overload may contribute to brain fog, headaches or migraines, light or sound sensitivity, anxiety, agitation, a racing mind, fragmented sleep, heart pounding, and feeling wired but tired.

It is also important to distinguish histamine intolerance from mast cell activation syndrome.

Histamine intolerance occurs when the body has difficulty breaking histamine down efficiently. MCAS involves overactivated mast cells that can release many mediators, including histamine. These patterns are not identical, but they can overlap, and nervous-system strain may worsen both.

A low-histamine diet can be foundational. It may help reduce daily reactions, calm digestive stress, and establish a more stable baseline. Oxalates, lectins, salicylates, and high amounts of sugar may add further stress when the body is already reactive.

Many individuals do better with a low-histamine Carnivore or meat-heavy approach that reduces potential triggers and provides highly bioavailable nutrients. However, nutrition is only one part of the picture.

Extreme reactions to antihistamines, supplements, medications, or seemingly minor triggers do not mean someone is too sensitive to heal. They may indicate that the system needs a greater sense of safety and regulation before it can tolerate more support.

Diet may lower the histamine load, while nervous-system regulation may help raise the reaction threshold. Lasting improvement usually requires layered support that may include:

• Low-histamine nutrition
• Personal trigger mapping
• Root-cause work
• Breathwork
• Vagal toning
• Somatic support
• Mindfulness
• Restorative sleep

The goal is not simply to keep removing foods. It is to help the body experience fewer flares, tolerate more, and become increasingly stable and resilient.

Our last live Wholeness Method cohort for 2026 is open now.

Learn more:
https://wholenessmethod.co/cohort

When is a client with CIRS ready for full-dose VIP?

Shoemaker’s current guidance places VIP near the end of the protocol and identifies several core readiness criteria. These include addressing significant ongoing exposure, meeting the applicable environmental target, achieving a negative MARCoNS culture, normal VCS and serum lipase, a HERTSMI-2 score of ≤10, and reviewing applicable preceding treatment steps and laboratory abnormalities.

At Empower Functional Health, we assess these criteria alongside individual factors that may affect readiness, tolerance, or treatment response.

These factors may include:

• Ongoing or renewed environmental exposure
• Persistent MARCoNS or other unmet criteria
• MCAS or histamine sensitivity
• Migraine susceptibility
• Blood-pressure or heart-rate sensitivity
• Sleep, mood, or medication-related factors
• Active inflammatory or infectious illness
• A dose that is too high or increased too quickly

Meeting the standard criteria may improve the likelihood that VIP is effective and make reactions easier to interpret. It doesn’t guarantee that every client will tolerate the same dose or titration schedule.

CIRS care isn’t one-size-fits-all. Take the quiz to explore the right next step for you: https://tinyurl.com/4y3ux2fz

When is a person with CIRS ready for full-dose VIP?

We recently updated our CIRS Shoemaker triangle to provide a more nuanced answer.

VIP remains a later-stage therapy within the Shoemaker Protocol. The revised graphic now highlights the core readiness criteria commonly reviewed before its use, including:

• Addressing significant ongoing exposure
• Meeting the applicable environmental target
• A negative MARCoNS culture
• Normal VCS and serum lipase
• HERTSMI-2 ≤10
• Review of preceding treatment steps and individual risk factors

We also clarified an important distinction in the evidence. Unresolved exposure, abnormal VCS, and persistent MARCoNS have been associated with reduced VIP efficacy. Current evidence does not establish that beginning VIP before all readiness criteria are met routinely causes permanent immune injury.

Following the sequence may improve the likelihood that VIP is both effective and easier to evaluate. It does not guarantee a reaction-free course, so individualized dosing, monitoring, and clinical oversight remain essential.

Access the full updated article:
https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/starting-vip-too-early/

VIP may be an important later-stage therapy for CIRS, but protocol placement alone doesn’t determine whether a client is ready.

Vasoactive intestinal peptide influences inflammation, circulation, digestion, immune regulation, sleep, circadian timing, and neurological signaling. Within the Shoemaker Protocol, prescribed intranasal VIP is generally considered after applicable preceding treatment steps have been addressed.

Shoemaker’s current criteria before full-dose VIP include:

• Addressing significant ongoing exposure
• Meeting the applicable environmental target
• Achieving a negative MARCoNS culture
• Normal VCS and serum lipase
• HERTSMI-2 ≤10
• Reviewing applicable earlier treatment steps and laboratory findings

At Empower Functional Health, we treat these criteria as a starting point, not the complete readiness assessment.

MCAS, migraine susceptibility, blood pressure or heart rate sensitivity, sleep, mood, psychiatric history, medication sensitivity, active inflammatory or infectious illness, dose, and speed of titration may also affect tolerance and response.

Unmet criteria are more clearly associated with a reduced likelihood of benefit and greater difficulty interpreting reactions.

Even after the core criteria are met, individualized dosing, monitoring, and clinical oversight remain essential.

Access the full updated article:
https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/starting-vip-too-early/

A diet can contain plenty of whole foods and still be limited in essential or conditionally essential nutrients.

Several nutrients are absent, low, or less bioavailable in plant foods, including vitamin B12, vitamin D3, vitamin K2, EPA and DHA, zinc, taurine, creatine, heme iron, and usable vitamin A.

The form of each nutrient matters.

Heme iron from animal foods is three times more bioavailable than non-heme iron from plants. Plant antinutrients, including oxalates, may further interfere with iron absorption.

Vitamin A presents another challenge.

Plant foods provide precursors that must be converted into usable vitamin A, and some people have a limited ability to complete that conversion.

Nutrition should be evaluated by more than the nutrients listed in a food. We also have to consider nutrient form, bioavailability, individual conversion ability, and whether the diet can remain nutritionally complete over time.

If you want to learn more, check out https://www.inflammationfix.co/