Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I don't want the week to be completed without making
sure I get this particular bit of audio in. Well,
let me say this before I play this. Coming up
on the show, we're going to talk to my new allergist,
doctor Chris Colosso. He's been my wife's allergist for five
(00:21):
years and she had bad allergies and he healed her.
And that's worth a lot to me. That's very, very
important to me that my wife be healthy. She's always happy,
but that she'd be healthy, and what a difference it
has made in her life. And so she finally dragged
(00:42):
me to see him, and I was so impressed as
I began this process, with his willingness to answer questions
and the research he's done and the focus he has
in his practice. Anyway, if you have allergies, it's pollen season.
Now it's just started. You're about to start feeling them.
(01:05):
You're I think you're going to really enjoy this. Now,
let me get to this interview. Let me get to
this statement by President Trump, because we are the energy
capital of the world, and this makes me happy as
a consumer, makes me happy as an investor, but it
makes me happy for all my friends and neighbors who
are going to be able to get back to work.
In the energy industry, a.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Major focus of our fight to defeat inflation is rapidly
reducing the cost of energy. The previous administration cut the
number of new oil and gas leases by ninety five percent,
slowed pipeline construction to a halt, and closed more than
one hundred power plants. We are opening up many of
(01:45):
those power plants right.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Now, and frankly, we have never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That's why on my first day in office, I declared
a national energy emergency. As you've heard me say many times,
we have more liquid gold under our feet than any
nation on Earth and by far, and now I fully
authorized the most talented team ever assembled to go and
(02:25):
get it. It's called Drill, Baby, Drill. My administration is
also working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska,
(02:48):
among the largest in the world, where Japan, South Korea
and other nations want to be our partner, with investments
of trillions of dollars each. It's never been anything like
that one. It will be true spectacular. It's all set
to go. The permittinggue has gotten and later this week
I will also take historic action to dramatically expand production
(03:09):
of critical minerals and rare earths.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
R right on, right on, as the Great Russian Ball
would say the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Please clap, please, please clap.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
My entire child in sleepy Mars with horrible, horrible houries
growing up in Orange and many of you, I can
only speak to Southeast Texas, but many of you who
grew up in this region experienced the same thing. I
had tubes not once, but twice in my ear, which
is basically a culvert, to get some drainage out of there,
(03:45):
and I had a terrible procedure they no longer do
called windows done. There was a brief period of time
around seventy nine or eighty where they would go in
and literally punch holes in your cheekbones and try to
create a culvert there, the idea being, you know, you're
kind of releasing them and letting the snot out of there.
It was extremely painful recovery and it didn't work. And
(04:06):
to this day, when I have anytime scans are done
on my face, the doctors will go, ugh, you had
windows Huh, yes, I did, uh yeah, And they don't
want to tell me. But then I tell him, I
know it was a terrible procedure. So my entire childhood
is marked by these terrible, terrible allergies, you know, stopped up,
(04:26):
your eyes running. You know, it's pollen season right now.
Those of you who know no, and a lot of
us do.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I meet my wife when I'm eighteen, she's twenty one.
She's just come from India, and she has no allergies.
And she can't understand why I'm constantly talking about allergies
and blowing my nose and everything else that goes with
this disgusting condition. And she has no allergies, and I'm jealous. Well,
lo and behold. Over the years, she does develop some allergies,
(04:52):
and unlike me, she does something about it. So five
years ago she discovered this doctor named Chris Colosso, and
he came highly commended and he's a superstar allergy doctor
asthma doctor. So she goes to see him, and you know,
she does all the tests. Everybody's had those tests done,
but she probably had them like me when you were
a kid, and they're much better today. And she comes
(05:14):
home and tells me, you know, she's allergic to dust mites,
which are in a lot of beds, so we we
travel with our own sheets now, and she's going to
start taking these shots, and so she takes those shots,
and it took about six months for her to be
completely allergy free. And it was one of those you know,
before and after testimonials that you don't really believe. You
(05:36):
figure the person had to be compensated, but I'm here
to tell you it was true. So she started in
on me. This was five years ago, so within four years,
within a year, she just goes for I think a
monthly and she's the happiest person in the world, and
you need to go and I, you know, I'm a guy.
You know, guys, you all understand we we'd rather bitch
about it than do anything about it. So eventually it
(05:58):
got so bad and y'all had to hear me go
through this that in late October early November, I caught
an upper respiratory which I do about every three years,
or so I thought, and it was unbearable. So I
about a month ago, I guess, go to her doctor
and I am already on a path to improvement, and
(06:23):
he identified a number of things for me that I
had no idea and I'm just impressed because I like people.
You know, my urologist Mohit Kara, he geeks out on
eurological stuff. My cardiologist Stan Duckman, he geeks out on
doctor stuff. I like people who are passionate about what
they do, the way Russell Lebarra is about the functioning
(06:44):
of his kitchen or the hiring of people. So the
more I talk to this guy, I was really fascinated
by his passion for this issue that affects a lot
of people. And his clinic is called Advanced Allergy and
Asthma Center. It's at the corner of Stella Link. Stella
Lincoln Wesland are basically the same street, and Hulcomb and
(07:05):
bel Air are basically the same street that has changed names.
So Wesleyan and Hulcombe or Stella Lincoln, bel Air, wherever
you want to think about it, that's where they are. Anyway.
So we get to talking about these allergies and what
causes them and all this stuff. And I thought, I'm
fifty four, relatively well read. I ask a lot of
questions and I learned things from him in just a
(07:25):
few meetings that I had no idea about. And I said, well,
let's share that on the air of moment. So I'm
gonna need you to pay attention. Okay, there'll be a
quiz at the end. Doctor Chris Colosso. Is his name
Cola Coo. Don't try to make sense of it. It's
a Portuguese name, is our guest. Let's start with this
doctor Chris Colosso. Article in the Chronicle a few days
ago that said, it is pollen season and it's a
(07:48):
bad season. What does that mean for people? Why does
that cause us so many problems when it's pollen season?
Explain it to me like I'm six years.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Old, Michael, thank you for having me on the show.
And so, and you'll start at the beginning. And so,
an allergy is an abnormal response to something that's not
really harmful to you. And so the body, depending on
your genetics or your environment, decides that it's going to
mount this immune response to something and then it every
(08:23):
time you get exposed to that, the body decides, Hey,
this thing is affecting me and I'm going to fight it.
And so that's what they gets allergy. And so pollen,
you know, is ubiquitous and all you know, Houston has
the right amount of humidity and higher levels of pollen
that you know, most people tend to have some level
(08:47):
of rhaniris or running nose and ocular symptoms that means
drainage from your eyes and those kinds of things when
pollen is very high. And so that's that's your introduction
to having allergy. Now most of us, you know, have
a certain level of resilience and that you have those
(09:08):
symptoms and sometimes it's for a day or two and
then you slowly get better. But what happens with allergy
is that it's considered an a topic march. And so
if you start off with one or two things, and
you know, we'll just make up a random amount. You
make one hundred histamine molecules. And histamine is the chemical
(09:30):
that your body secretes. It causes you to have the
itching and the sneezing and the ie itching and the
drainage and post nasal drip and all that kind of stuff.
And you know, the first year, you may make one
hundred histamine molecules, and you know, you can take a
n antihistamine and you do better, and then you know, with
the natural course of the disease, what happens the following
(09:51):
year is you make even more and you become allergic
to more things. And so once you get on that
pathway of this abnormal hume response to something that's harmless,
the body just you know, goes down that pathway and
starts reacting to different pollens, to dust, to animal vander,
(10:13):
to foods, and that's how allergy is. And so most
people within the next week or two, if you and
those who know, no, you're going to get miserable because
once you start seeing you know, I've just noticed the oak,
the leaves are already falling. Once that starts, the oak
pollen is going to start. And so most everyone in
(10:34):
Houston knows when you start seeing a little bit of
that yellow stuff on your car, you're going to get
kind of miserable. And so that's what's coming. And so
as you know, over the years, what you see and
most people may you know, have some idea with this,
is that the symptoms initially started, you know, and they're
not so bad, and then the following year it gets worse,
(10:56):
and it gets worse, and then finally you get to
where you're using multiple different medicines in this and you're
still miserable. And so what rhyanidas does is you have
all these secretions in your nose and they have to
go somewhere, and so, like you know what Michael was
saying with in his case, in the old days, they
had thought, hey, we'll just cut out this path and
(11:18):
that will help everything drain and then we'll be better.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Doctor Chris Colosso, old right there, old, right there. Our
guest is doctor Chris Colosso. He's an allergy and asthma specialist.
He's now my doctor. He's been my wife's doctor in
a very good one. We'll continue our conversation with him
right in the middle of apologies coming on. You've got
the Michael Berry Show. Chris Colosso is our guest. He
is my new allergy doctor. He's been my wife's doctor
(11:42):
for five years and proofs in the pudding. She has
had phenomenal results. So all of the problems she had
with allergies are gone and we are very grateful for it.
His shop that he is the head of his Advanced
Allergy and Asthma Center, which is over at Wesleyan and Hulcombe.
(12:02):
You know where that is, just south of West University.
Doctor Chris Colosso, let me take you back from you
said that when this pollen comes out even if we
take an anahistamine, which which dulls down our natural reaction.
But you talked about the symptoms of of what happens
the result, and that's the s not that's the eyes watering,
(12:25):
that's why is the body doing that.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So the so through evolution allergy initially, and I know
there's caveats to this, and you know, the immune system,
the part that's responsible for allergy, they used to think
used to be directed towards parasites, and so that part
(12:51):
of the immune system used to be very active well
against parasites and you know those kinds of pathogens. In
most of the developed world, we don't have that much
parasites to deal with. And so a simple way to
think about it is this evolution, this part of the
immune system that was functioning so well to take care
(13:13):
of parasites now sort of has nothing to react to,
and so it starts going down this pathway to find
something to do, if you will. And that's a simplistic
way of looking at it. But now it starts reacting
to allergens, and so it once it gets on that path,
it it sort of thinks that it's protecting you against
(13:37):
this stuff when this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is not really I don't understand the purpose of the mucus.
How is it it forming all this snot? How is
that ever going to help me?
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Well, you know, when you have a lot of that
snot and it's draining out in that kind of thing,
it's it's you know, you're probably not when you're very congested,
you can't breathe. They won't get much fallen in there,
and so it's not even a good response, but it's
(14:10):
just the way the body is reacting to it.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Well, no, but that makes actual sense because that that
would reduce the amount of pollen that you would continue
to get. It never crossed my mind. So what we're doing,
noimes go ahead.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
So sometimes when people say, oh, I had to find
a surgery and now they trim my terminans and open
me up and now I can get all this stuff,
and then I feel like it's you know, still making
me miserable. And that's where where it's all open now.
And you know, so it doesn't change the surgery's not
going to change your immune system.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So what is the answer. You've got to get your
immune system to stop reacting in this manner?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Correct and so one of the things that you know
allergies do, or you know that that your wife did, right,
and and we're jumping the gun here, so we're saying, oh,
I'm not saying that everyone needs shots or something like that.
But if you look at that, what allergy shots and
they've been around for one hundred years, and what allergy
(15:10):
shots is is to try and teach the immune system,
if you will, to not react to what you're allergic to.
And so what we do is you make these, you know,
these extracts, which are basically has you know exactly what
you're allergic to, and you give it back to the patient. Now,
(15:33):
you couldn't possibly give them the full strength shot or
you'd kill them because they'd have a whole body allergic
reaction to the shot. And so what you do is
you deluded down one hundred thousand fold and you give
it back to the patient and in slow incremental doses.
And so in that way, you're slowly introducing the allergen
(15:55):
to the body. And what that does over a period
of time is it it starts generating these cells in
the body called T suppress our cells, and these T
suppress our cells suppress the immune response to whatever is
in the allergy to whatever is in the shot. And
so that is why in patients who've done immunotherapy and
(16:20):
those kind of things, they don't react as strongly. So
when your body sees the pollen the next pollen season
and you've been on shots, it doesn't react as strongly
to the shot to the pollen. And and so you know,
medications treat symptoms, they don't do anything for the problem.
(16:43):
So the problem sort of festers along in the background.
And and and that's why, you know, when we talked
about me and you you know, I was like, hey,
you know during pollen season, and I do this too,
if I go run around rice. I mean this is
you know, I try not to do the loop during
(17:05):
oak season, but if I do run around it, I
sometimes have, you know, mild symptoms. I immediately do a
sinus rints and clean out all that pollen so it's
not sitting in my airway in my nasal passage making
me horrible. And that way you just physically do better.
But what allergy shots is to try and tell the body, hey,
(17:26):
stop reacting to this, you know, And so it's trying
to put a hold on your body going down this
wrong pathway of reacting to something that's harmless.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Mary Telly Boden has become nationally famous for the fact
that she criticized the COVID protocols and all those But
before she was famous, and just as that was beginning
to happen, I had her on the show to talk
about a sinus rents because I had seen her. She
had a handle like doctor snot sucker or something something
funny like that. And she posts videos of doing these
(18:00):
sinus rinses and she was a big fan of My
wife does it. I don't do it as often. I
know I should. I'm just irregular. My wife does it frequently.
But on that point, I know Mary Tally Boden is
a huge fan of that, and it sounds like you
are as.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Well I am, And so you know there, So all
of the sinus rinses come from this. So in yoga
one hundred years ago, so in India they know there's
a thing called nati and actually the netty pop comes
from nathi, which is a term in yoga of where
you rinse out the nasal passages. And they knew a
(18:38):
long time ago that for whatever reason, if there was
inflammation in the nose, the chest would do bad. And
so in patients who have asthma, and this is you know,
a long time ago in India, they rinsed the nose
out and no one knows he knew why. Over the
(18:59):
lasteen to twenty years, we started to find out that
it's considered the single airway hypothesis, and so if there's
inflammation in one part of the airway, that inflammation will
irritate the whole airway. And so the nose is connected,
you know, to the lungs and so a lot of
people will experience this when they have sometimes bad sinus
(19:23):
infections and upper estor infections, then they'll have wheezing in
those kinds of things. And that's where you know, physically
cleaning out all that mucus helps. And the other thing
that you know, these rinses do is physically clean out
the pond or the dust might or whatever, so the
(19:44):
antigen is not just sitting in there, you know, keeping
the immune reaction going.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Hold with me for just moro. Doctor Chris Colosso, he's
at Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center, which is Wesley and Holcombe.
He's he's we have had great he needs out you
hear him sneeze he needs Uh. He is our guest.
He's done great for my wife. I've started with him
(20:12):
and I really like his ability to explain these things,
and we will continue having him do that in the
middle of Pollen season. Coming up, Love Disney Productions, The
Love Budd Dean Joe has been race driver Michael Barry
funny Hacker.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
That's Ramon Duck, King of Dean.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Suggested for general audiences. Doctor Chris Colosso is our guest
Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center. If you can't remember his
name or the location, you can email me. He is
not a show sponsor yet. He doesn't know he's going
to be. But he's not a show sponsor yet. But
I will still forward you or Emily will forward you
(20:50):
to their phone numbers so that you can call and
get an appointment if you want to go have the
test done, or you want to go see him for
a consultation, so that you can connect with him. I'm
a big fan because he's made my wife very healthy
and very happy, and that makes me very happy. So
doctor Colosso, let's go back to.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
You.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Uh. You first put my wife on Zyrtec, and we
hear a lot about zertech. Now it's over the counter,
and Zyrtec basically suppresses the body's desire to overreact to
this pollen we see out there all the time. Now,
can you talk through the history of that drug and
how that has affected your practice.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Zyrtec is an antihistamine, and so initially, you know, when
Zyrtec first came out, it was prescription and so you know,
you couldn't get zyrtec unless you went to the doctor.
You went to the allergist, and so you know, there's
a couple of things that the or moving the medicine
over the counter has done to the practice of allergy
(21:50):
for us. And it's it's just interesting to see. And
so when you have a lot of histamine around and
you feel miserable and you drainage and congestion and you're
itching and all that kind of stuff, and you would
have to go to the doctor, and a lot of
times the alogists would say, hey, let's see what you're
(22:10):
allergic to, and they do testing and you know, find
one or two things that was positive and then sometimes
you know, either start you on treatment for that or
do avoidance measures of those kind of things. But as
these drugs have gone, you know, over the counter, initially
we were thought, oh, there's going to be no need
(22:32):
for allergists, but in fact, what we've seen is that
we now tend to pick up patients who are a
lot more serious. So if there was no zer tech
when you know, you first start having allergy, and let's
say you're just allergic to dust mites, I'll just use
that as an example, then you know, we would see
(22:55):
the patient and sometimes if they'd get on shots for
dusk mate, then they'd do a lot better. But now
with Zyrtech being over the counter, so let's say you
have a mild dust smile allergy and then you start
having springtime seas and then you take zyrtech. Zyrtech blocks
hist meine, but it's not aligning, it's not doing anything
or not doing much because the allergy process of you know,
(23:19):
developing allergies to stuff is still going on. And so
what happens is then as long as that Zyrtec can
keep blocking the amount of his being released, you'll be okay.
And then you start doing a nose spray for allergy,
and that's over the counter and in the background you're
you're you know, developing, not in all cases, but in
(23:40):
a lot of cases, you're developing more allergy. And so
then what happens is the person. You know, it's almost rare,
almost never that I see a patient who's not tried
zyrtec before or tried nose sprays now or those kind
of things. And so while the zyrtech is helping you,
(24:02):
you know, do okay or control your symptoms, if the
allergy is going on in the background, then you're developing
you know, more allergy. And so it's not atypical for
me to see a patient who has now multiple things
that they're allergic to. So, you know, as in Michael's case,
and since you know we're talking about this, it can
(24:27):
be multiple trees and grasses in those kinds of things.
And so in so what we tend to do we say,
you know, as allergies, see patients who are a lot
further along in the allergic process as opposed to you know,
when zerotech and those kind of drugs were prescription based,
(24:47):
because you would just end up seeing the patient earlier.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But what does that mean you know that farther along
are your allergies getting worse through time is that it's
not just here's the.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Are that's exactly right and how are they getting and
so Okay, so that's a very good question. So and
it's a little bit technical, but in the body you
have these these chemicals floating around called inter lukens, and
inter lukens sometimes will play a key role. Is if
(25:18):
if you have if you're exposed to analogy and or
you know, let's say we'll just we'll just make up something.
Let's say you're allergic to oak pollen. And when you're
allergic to oak pollen or you have bad allergies, you
have these chemicals flowing around and then there's many different
numbers of chemicals, but you'll pick the ones important analogy,
(25:39):
and so you have high levels of aisle four, aisle five,
and asle thirteen. Now, when you get exposed to a
pollen in the presence of high if there's a lot
of aisle four, aisle five, aisle thirteen, you're more likely
to make an allergic antibody to it, and so they're
(26:00):
not you know, there's studies that have done that show this.
Let's say you take a person who's allergic to oak
and during oak season, you expose them to pecan pollen.
And in another chamber, you take someone who's not allergic
to oak and you expose them to pecon pollen. And
then three months later you go back and you go
(26:23):
and check the blood and see who has an allergic
antibody to pecan. And interestingly, the person who was allergic
to oak is now allergic to oak and pecon, whereas
the one who wasn't allergic to oak isn't, you know,
necessarily allergic to con. And so allergy tends to beget allergy.
(26:47):
And so that's why that cycle just seems to you know,
once it starts, you tend to start going down that pathway.
And so that is why that is what I meant
is that when we you know, now see patients who've
been using over the kind of medicines they are already
then tend to be allergic to multiple different things, whereas
(27:09):
before those ween those medications of prescription, you would see
those patients a lot earlier on the disease process.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, it's interesting because living where we live, and having
lived here my entire life, with only some brief periods
of living away, it's something that we grow accustomed to.
My mother had terrible, terrible allergies. My brother had pretty
bad allergies, and mine are not as bad as my
mother's were, but pretty bad. So it's almost something we
grow accustomed to. And so watching my wife's recovery or
(27:39):
healing or improvement, whatever you want to call it, I
almost didn't believe that there was anything that could be
done that could possibly make my life so much better.
But when I saw it with her, I said, my goodness,
that is especially with this, you know, three months of
just horrible and it was affecting my ability to do
the show. I said, Okay, I'm willing to spend the
(28:03):
actual time to go and get something done about this.
Hold with us for just a moment. Chris Colosso is
our guest. That is spelled the LAC. If you want
to go see him. It is Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center.
It's on Grammercy Street, which is over kind of near
(28:24):
Rice University, you could say a little south of West
University if you know where that is, and otherwise you
can email me and I will connect you with their
website if you want to go make an appointment to
see him. More of doctor Chris Colosso in the middle
of pollen season. As we are, Blow your nose and
we'll have more come up.
I don't want the week to be completed without making
sure I get this particular bit of audio in. Well,
let me say this before I play this. Coming up
on the show, we're going to talk to my new allergist,
doctor Chris Colosso. He's been my wife's allergist for five
(00:21):
years and she had bad allergies and he healed her.
And that's worth a lot to me. That's very, very
important to me that my wife be healthy. She's always happy,
but that she'd be healthy, and what a difference it
has made in her life. And so she finally dragged
(00:42):
me to see him, and I was so impressed as
I began this process, with his willingness to answer questions
and the research he's done and the focus he has
in his practice. Anyway, if you have allergies, it's pollen season.
Now it's just started. You're about to start feeling them.
(01:05):
You're I think you're going to really enjoy this. Now,
let me get to this interview. Let me get to
this statement by President Trump, because we are the energy
capital of the world, and this makes me happy as
a consumer, makes me happy as an investor, but it
makes me happy for all my friends and neighbors who
are going to be able to get back to work.
In the energy industry, a.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Major focus of our fight to defeat inflation is rapidly
reducing the cost of energy. The previous administration cut the
number of new oil and gas leases by ninety five percent,
slowed pipeline construction to a halt, and closed more than
one hundred power plants. We are opening up many of
(01:45):
those power plants right.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Now, and frankly, we have never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That's why on my first day in office, I declared
a national energy emergency. As you've heard me say many times,
we have more liquid gold under our feet than any
nation on Earth and by far, and now I fully
authorized the most talented team ever assembled to go and
(02:25):
get it. It's called Drill, Baby, Drill. My administration is
also working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska,
(02:48):
among the largest in the world, where Japan, South Korea
and other nations want to be our partner, with investments
of trillions of dollars each. It's never been anything like
that one. It will be true spectacular. It's all set
to go. The permittinggue has gotten and later this week
I will also take historic action to dramatically expand production
(03:09):
of critical minerals and rare earths.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
R right on, right on, as the Great Russian Ball
would say the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Please clap, please, please clap.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
My entire child in sleepy Mars with horrible, horrible houries
growing up in Orange and many of you, I can
only speak to Southeast Texas, but many of you who
grew up in this region experienced the same thing. I
had tubes not once, but twice in my ear, which
is basically a culvert, to get some drainage out of there,
(03:45):
and I had a terrible procedure they no longer do
called windows done. There was a brief period of time
around seventy nine or eighty where they would go in
and literally punch holes in your cheekbones and try to
create a culvert there, the idea being, you know, you're
kind of releasing them and letting the snot out of there.
It was extremely painful recovery and it didn't work. And
(04:06):
to this day, when I have anytime scans are done
on my face, the doctors will go, ugh, you had
windows Huh, yes, I did, uh yeah, And they don't
want to tell me. But then I tell him, I
know it was a terrible procedure. So my entire childhood
is marked by these terrible, terrible allergies, you know, stopped up,
(04:26):
your eyes running. You know, it's pollen season right now.
Those of you who know no, and a lot of
us do.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I meet my wife when I'm eighteen, she's twenty one.
She's just come from India, and she has no allergies.
And she can't understand why I'm constantly talking about allergies
and blowing my nose and everything else that goes with
this disgusting condition. And she has no allergies, and I'm jealous. Well,
lo and behold. Over the years, she does develop some allergies,
(04:52):
and unlike me, she does something about it. So five
years ago she discovered this doctor named Chris Colosso, and
he came highly commended and he's a superstar allergy doctor
asthma doctor. So she goes to see him, and you know,
she does all the tests. Everybody's had those tests done,
but she probably had them like me when you were
a kid, and they're much better today. And she comes
(05:14):
home and tells me, you know, she's allergic to dust mites,
which are in a lot of beds, so we we
travel with our own sheets now, and she's going to
start taking these shots, and so she takes those shots,
and it took about six months for her to be
completely allergy free. And it was one of those you know,
before and after testimonials that you don't really believe. You
(05:36):
figure the person had to be compensated, but I'm here
to tell you it was true. So she started in
on me. This was five years ago, so within four years,
within a year, she just goes for I think a
monthly and she's the happiest person in the world, and
you need to go and I, you know, I'm a guy.
You know, guys, you all understand we we'd rather bitch
about it than do anything about it. So eventually it
(05:58):
got so bad and y'all had to hear me go
through this that in late October early November, I caught
an upper respiratory which I do about every three years,
or so I thought, and it was unbearable. So I
about a month ago, I guess, go to her doctor
and I am already on a path to improvement, and
(06:23):
he identified a number of things for me that I
had no idea and I'm just impressed because I like people.
You know, my urologist Mohit Kara, he geeks out on
eurological stuff. My cardiologist Stan Duckman, he geeks out on
doctor stuff. I like people who are passionate about what
they do, the way Russell Lebarra is about the functioning
(06:44):
of his kitchen or the hiring of people. So the
more I talk to this guy, I was really fascinated
by his passion for this issue that affects a lot
of people. And his clinic is called Advanced Allergy and
Asthma Center. It's at the corner of Stella Link. Stella
Lincoln Wesland are basically the same street, and Hulcomb and
(07:05):
bel Air are basically the same street that has changed names.
So Wesleyan and Hulcombe or Stella Lincoln, bel Air, wherever
you want to think about it, that's where they are. Anyway.
So we get to talking about these allergies and what
causes them and all this stuff. And I thought, I'm
fifty four, relatively well read. I ask a lot of
questions and I learned things from him in just a
(07:25):
few meetings that I had no idea about. And I said, well,
let's share that on the air of moment. So I'm
gonna need you to pay attention. Okay, there'll be a
quiz at the end. Doctor Chris Colosso. Is his name
Cola Coo. Don't try to make sense of it. It's
a Portuguese name, is our guest. Let's start with this
doctor Chris Colosso. Article in the Chronicle a few days
ago that said, it is pollen season and it's a
(07:48):
bad season. What does that mean for people? Why does
that cause us so many problems when it's pollen season?
Explain it to me like I'm six years.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Old, Michael, thank you for having me on the show.
And so, and you'll start at the beginning. And so,
an allergy is an abnormal response to something that's not
really harmful to you. And so the body, depending on
your genetics or your environment, decides that it's going to
mount this immune response to something and then it every
(08:23):
time you get exposed to that, the body decides, Hey,
this thing is affecting me and I'm going to fight it.
And so that's what they gets allergy. And so pollen,
you know, is ubiquitous and all you know, Houston has
the right amount of humidity and higher levels of pollen
that you know, most people tend to have some level
(08:47):
of rhaniris or running nose and ocular symptoms that means
drainage from your eyes and those kinds of things when
pollen is very high. And so that's that's your introduction
to having allergy. Now most of us, you know, have
a certain level of resilience and that you have those
(09:08):
symptoms and sometimes it's for a day or two and
then you slowly get better. But what happens with allergy
is that it's considered an a topic march. And so
if you start off with one or two things, and
you know, we'll just make up a random amount. You
make one hundred histamine molecules. And histamine is the chemical
(09:30):
that your body secretes. It causes you to have the
itching and the sneezing and the ie itching and the
drainage and post nasal drip and all that kind of stuff.
And you know, the first year, you may make one
hundred histamine molecules, and you know, you can take a
n antihistamine and you do better, and then you know, with
the natural course of the disease, what happens the following
(09:51):
year is you make even more and you become allergic
to more things. And so once you get on that
pathway of this abnormal hume response to something that's harmless,
the body just you know, goes down that pathway and
starts reacting to different pollens, to dust, to animal vander,
(10:13):
to foods, and that's how allergy is. And so most
people within the next week or two, if you and
those who know, no, you're going to get miserable because
once you start seeing you know, I've just noticed the oak,
the leaves are already falling. Once that starts, the oak
pollen is going to start. And so most everyone in
(10:34):
Houston knows when you start seeing a little bit of
that yellow stuff on your car, you're going to get
kind of miserable. And so that's what's coming. And so
as you know, over the years, what you see and
most people may you know, have some idea with this,
is that the symptoms initially started, you know, and they're
not so bad, and then the following year it gets worse,
(10:56):
and it gets worse, and then finally you get to
where you're using multiple different medicines in this and you're
still miserable. And so what rhyanidas does is you have
all these secretions in your nose and they have to
go somewhere, and so, like you know what Michael was
saying with in his case, in the old days, they
had thought, hey, we'll just cut out this path and
(11:18):
that will help everything drain and then we'll be better.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Doctor Chris Colosso, old right there, old, right there. Our
guest is doctor Chris Colosso. He's an allergy and asthma specialist.
He's now my doctor. He's been my wife's doctor in
a very good one. We'll continue our conversation with him
right in the middle of apologies coming on. You've got
the Michael Berry Show. Chris Colosso is our guest. He
is my new allergy doctor. He's been my wife's doctor
(11:42):
for five years and proofs in the pudding. She has
had phenomenal results. So all of the problems she had
with allergies are gone and we are very grateful for it.
His shop that he is the head of his Advanced
Allergy and Asthma Center, which is over at Wesleyan and Hulcombe.
(12:02):
You know where that is, just south of West University.
Doctor Chris Colosso, let me take you back from you
said that when this pollen comes out even if we
take an anahistamine, which which dulls down our natural reaction.
But you talked about the symptoms of of what happens
the result, and that's the s not that's the eyes watering,
(12:25):
that's why is the body doing that.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So the so through evolution allergy initially, and I know
there's caveats to this, and you know, the immune system,
the part that's responsible for allergy, they used to think
used to be directed towards parasites, and so that part
(12:51):
of the immune system used to be very active well
against parasites and you know those kinds of pathogens. In
most of the developed world, we don't have that much
parasites to deal with. And so a simple way to
think about it is this evolution, this part of the
immune system that was functioning so well to take care
(13:13):
of parasites now sort of has nothing to react to,
and so it starts going down this pathway to find
something to do, if you will. And that's a simplistic
way of looking at it. But now it starts reacting
to allergens, and so it once it gets on that path,
it it sort of thinks that it's protecting you against
(13:37):
this stuff when this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is not really I don't understand the purpose of the mucus.
How is it it forming all this snot? How is
that ever going to help me?
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Well, you know, when you have a lot of that
snot and it's draining out in that kind of thing,
it's it's you know, you're probably not when you're very congested,
you can't breathe. They won't get much fallen in there,
and so it's not even a good response, but it's
(14:10):
just the way the body is reacting to it.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Well, no, but that makes actual sense because that that
would reduce the amount of pollen that you would continue
to get. It never crossed my mind. So what we're doing,
noimes go ahead.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
So sometimes when people say, oh, I had to find
a surgery and now they trim my terminans and open
me up and now I can get all this stuff,
and then I feel like it's you know, still making
me miserable. And that's where where it's all open now.
And you know, so it doesn't change the surgery's not
going to change your immune system.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So what is the answer. You've got to get your
immune system to stop reacting in this manner?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Correct and so one of the things that you know
allergies do, or you know that that your wife did, right,
and and we're jumping the gun here, so we're saying, oh,
I'm not saying that everyone needs shots or something like that.
But if you look at that, what allergy shots and
they've been around for one hundred years, and what allergy
(15:10):
shots is is to try and teach the immune system,
if you will, to not react to what you're allergic to.
And so what we do is you make these, you know,
these extracts, which are basically has you know exactly what
you're allergic to, and you give it back to the patient. Now,
(15:33):
you couldn't possibly give them the full strength shot or
you'd kill them because they'd have a whole body allergic
reaction to the shot. And so what you do is
you deluded down one hundred thousand fold and you give
it back to the patient and in slow incremental doses.
And so in that way, you're slowly introducing the allergen
(15:55):
to the body. And what that does over a period
of time is it it starts generating these cells in
the body called T suppress our cells, and these T
suppress our cells suppress the immune response to whatever is
in the allergy to whatever is in the shot. And
so that is why in patients who've done immunotherapy and
(16:20):
those kind of things, they don't react as strongly. So
when your body sees the pollen the next pollen season
and you've been on shots, it doesn't react as strongly
to the shot to the pollen. And and so you know,
medications treat symptoms, they don't do anything for the problem.
(16:43):
So the problem sort of festers along in the background.
And and and that's why, you know, when we talked
about me and you you know, I was like, hey,
you know during pollen season, and I do this too,
if I go run around rice. I mean this is
you know, I try not to do the loop during
(17:05):
oak season, but if I do run around it, I
sometimes have, you know, mild symptoms. I immediately do a
sinus rints and clean out all that pollen so it's
not sitting in my airway in my nasal passage making
me horrible. And that way you just physically do better.
But what allergy shots is to try and tell the body, hey,
(17:26):
stop reacting to this, you know, And so it's trying
to put a hold on your body going down this
wrong pathway of reacting to something that's harmless.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Mary Telly Boden has become nationally famous for the fact
that she criticized the COVID protocols and all those But
before she was famous, and just as that was beginning
to happen, I had her on the show to talk
about a sinus rents because I had seen her. She
had a handle like doctor snot sucker or something something
funny like that. And she posts videos of doing these
(18:00):
sinus rinses and she was a big fan of My
wife does it. I don't do it as often. I
know I should. I'm just irregular. My wife does it frequently.
But on that point, I know Mary Tally Boden is
a huge fan of that, and it sounds like you
are as.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Well I am, And so you know there, So all
of the sinus rinses come from this. So in yoga
one hundred years ago, so in India they know there's
a thing called nati and actually the netty pop comes
from nathi, which is a term in yoga of where
you rinse out the nasal passages. And they knew a
(18:38):
long time ago that for whatever reason, if there was
inflammation in the nose, the chest would do bad. And
so in patients who have asthma, and this is you know,
a long time ago in India, they rinsed the nose
out and no one knows he knew why. Over the
(18:59):
lasteen to twenty years, we started to find out that
it's considered the single airway hypothesis, and so if there's
inflammation in one part of the airway, that inflammation will
irritate the whole airway. And so the nose is connected,
you know, to the lungs and so a lot of
people will experience this when they have sometimes bad sinus
(19:23):
infections and upper estor infections, then they'll have wheezing in
those kinds of things. And that's where you know, physically
cleaning out all that mucus helps. And the other thing
that you know, these rinses do is physically clean out
the pond or the dust might or whatever, so the
(19:44):
antigen is not just sitting in there, you know, keeping
the immune reaction going.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Hold with me for just moro. Doctor Chris Colosso, he's
at Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center, which is Wesley and Holcombe.
He's he's we have had great he needs out you
hear him sneeze he needs Uh. He is our guest.
He's done great for my wife. I've started with him
(20:12):
and I really like his ability to explain these things,
and we will continue having him do that in the
middle of Pollen season. Coming up, Love Disney Productions, The
Love Budd Dean Joe has been race driver Michael Barry
funny Hacker.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
That's Ramon Duck, King of Dean.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Suggested for general audiences. Doctor Chris Colosso is our guest
Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center. If you can't remember his
name or the location, you can email me. He is
not a show sponsor yet. He doesn't know he's going
to be. But he's not a show sponsor yet. But
I will still forward you or Emily will forward you
(20:50):
to their phone numbers so that you can call and
get an appointment if you want to go have the
test done, or you want to go see him for
a consultation, so that you can connect with him. I'm
a big fan because he's made my wife very healthy
and very happy, and that makes me very happy. So
doctor Colosso, let's go back to.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
You.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Uh. You first put my wife on Zyrtec, and we
hear a lot about zertech. Now it's over the counter,
and Zyrtec basically suppresses the body's desire to overreact to
this pollen we see out there all the time. Now,
can you talk through the history of that drug and
how that has affected your practice.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Zyrtec is an antihistamine, and so initially, you know, when
Zyrtec first came out, it was prescription and so you know,
you couldn't get zyrtec unless you went to the doctor.
You went to the allergist, and so you know, there's
a couple of things that the or moving the medicine
over the counter has done to the practice of allergy
(21:50):
for us. And it's it's just interesting to see. And
so when you have a lot of histamine around and
you feel miserable and you drainage and congestion and you're
itching and all that kind of stuff, and you would
have to go to the doctor, and a lot of
times the alogists would say, hey, let's see what you're
(22:10):
allergic to, and they do testing and you know, find
one or two things that was positive and then sometimes
you know, either start you on treatment for that or
do avoidance measures of those kind of things. But as
these drugs have gone, you know, over the counter, initially
we were thought, oh, there's going to be no need
(22:32):
for allergists, but in fact, what we've seen is that
we now tend to pick up patients who are a
lot more serious. So if there was no zer tech
when you know, you first start having allergy, and let's
say you're just allergic to dust mites, I'll just use
that as an example, then you know, we would see
(22:55):
the patient and sometimes if they'd get on shots for
dusk mate, then they'd do a lot better. But now
with Zyrtech being over the counter, so let's say you
have a mild dust smile allergy and then you start
having springtime seas and then you take zyrtech. Zyrtech blocks
hist meine, but it's not aligning, it's not doing anything
or not doing much because the allergy process of you know,
(23:19):
developing allergies to stuff is still going on. And so
what happens is then as long as that Zyrtec can
keep blocking the amount of his being released, you'll be okay.
And then you start doing a nose spray for allergy,
and that's over the counter and in the background you're
you're you know, developing, not in all cases, but in
(23:40):
a lot of cases, you're developing more allergy. And so
then what happens is the person. You know, it's almost rare,
almost never that I see a patient who's not tried
zyrtec before or tried nose sprays now or those kind
of things. And so while the zyrtech is helping you,
(24:02):
you know, do okay or control your symptoms, if the
allergy is going on in the background, then you're developing
you know, more allergy. And so it's not atypical for
me to see a patient who has now multiple things
that they're allergic to. So, you know, as in Michael's case,
and since you know we're talking about this, it can
(24:27):
be multiple trees and grasses in those kinds of things.
And so in so what we tend to do we say,
you know, as allergies, see patients who are a lot
further along in the allergic process as opposed to you know,
when zerotech and those kind of drugs were prescription based,
(24:47):
because you would just end up seeing the patient earlier.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But what does that mean you know that farther along
are your allergies getting worse through time is that it's
not just here's the.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Are that's exactly right and how are they getting and
so Okay, so that's a very good question. So and
it's a little bit technical, but in the body you
have these these chemicals floating around called inter lukens, and
inter lukens sometimes will play a key role. Is if
(25:18):
if you have if you're exposed to analogy and or
you know, let's say we'll just we'll just make up something.
Let's say you're allergic to oak pollen. And when you're
allergic to oak pollen or you have bad allergies, you
have these chemicals flowing around and then there's many different
numbers of chemicals, but you'll pick the ones important analogy,
(25:39):
and so you have high levels of aisle four, aisle five,
and asle thirteen. Now, when you get exposed to a
pollen in the presence of high if there's a lot
of aisle four, aisle five, aisle thirteen, you're more likely
to make an allergic antibody to it, and so they're
(26:00):
not you know, there's studies that have done that show this.
Let's say you take a person who's allergic to oak
and during oak season, you expose them to pecan pollen.
And in another chamber, you take someone who's not allergic
to oak and you expose them to pecon pollen. And
then three months later you go back and you go
(26:23):
and check the blood and see who has an allergic
antibody to pecan. And interestingly, the person who was allergic
to oak is now allergic to oak and pecon, whereas
the one who wasn't allergic to oak isn't, you know,
necessarily allergic to con. And so allergy tends to beget allergy.
(26:47):
And so that's why that cycle just seems to you know,
once it starts, you tend to start going down that pathway.
And so that is why that is what I meant
is that when we you know, now see patients who've
been using over the kind of medicines they are already
then tend to be allergic to multiple different things, whereas
(27:09):
before those ween those medications of prescription, you would see
those patients a lot earlier on the disease process.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, it's interesting because living where we live, and having
lived here my entire life, with only some brief periods
of living away, it's something that we grow accustomed to.
My mother had terrible, terrible allergies. My brother had pretty
bad allergies, and mine are not as bad as my
mother's were, but pretty bad. So it's almost something we
grow accustomed to. And so watching my wife's recovery or
(27:39):
healing or improvement, whatever you want to call it, I
almost didn't believe that there was anything that could be
done that could possibly make my life so much better.
But when I saw it with her, I said, my goodness,
that is especially with this, you know, three months of
just horrible and it was affecting my ability to do
the show. I said, Okay, I'm willing to spend the
(28:03):
actual time to go and get something done about this.
Hold with us for just a moment. Chris Colosso is
our guest. That is spelled the LAC. If you want
to go see him. It is Advanced Allergy and Asthma Center.
It's on Grammercy Street, which is over kind of near
(28:24):
Rice University, you could say a little south of West
University if you know where that is, and otherwise you
can email me and I will connect you with their
website if you want to go make an appointment to
see him. More of doctor Chris Colosso in the middle
of pollen season. As we are, Blow your nose and
we'll have more come up.
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