Seasonal Misery
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Until 3 years ago, I woke with a headache every morning and took 3 Excedrin. Then I took 2 Claritin in the morning and again before bed to keep my drippy seasonal allergies in check and decrease my frequency of sinus infections. I still had regular sinus infections and walking pneumonia 3 to 4 times per year.
My sinus issues seemed to last all year but would spike in February as the grass began to green. Boy, I could tell you when I forgot my Claritin and it was a good day when my morning Excedrin were the only ones I needed.
I didn’t have allergies growing up. They started to show up in college and continued to get worse with each passing year.
Why was I having these worsening allergy issues – were there new molds, spores, or pollens in the air or was something changing inside me?
An allergic reaction happens when your immune system misidentifies something completely harmless as a threat – say pollen. Now your body will attack pollen every time it enters the body as if it were a pathogen trying to make you sick. These allergic reactions are inflammatory and the product of an overactive immune system.
Our gut is the first line of defense against anything that might come in through our food. Think of your digestive track as the hole of a donut. Food is actually still on the outside of the body until it enters the blood stream and the meat of the donut. One of our GI tract’s important jobs is identification – what is harmless and what is dangerous? That’s exactly the part that breaks down in an allergic reaction.
Allergies involve quite a bit of inflammation – puffy eyes, swollen throats, and skin rashes. All this inflammation only adds to our overactive immune response. I like to think of our bodies as have an inflammation bucket. All the things that we do to our bodies contributes a drip to this bucket. Eating processed and refined foods – drip, drip. Stress – drip, drip, drip. Lack of sleep – drip, drip. Alcohol and smoking – drip. Pollution and toxins that we are exposed to – drip, drip. And so on… That bucket can only hold so much and eventually it will overflow and we will start to see the health consequences.
This is why my allergies were getting worse – my bucket was full and my body could no longer tolerate the level of inflammation. My headaches, sinus infections, and pneumonia were my clues that “something was going on in there.”
3 years ago, I made a radical change in my diet. I didn’t make this change because of my allergies but because I had a stress fracture in the femoral head of my right hip. I thought I ate a healthy diet – whole grains, lots of milk but little did I know that my diet was causing inflammation and poor gut health.
I starting eating using the Paleo template and focusing on nutrient dense foods – vegetables, fermented foods and bone broth. I removed all the foods that were inflaming my body – industrial seed oils, gluten and processed sugar. I also started to pay attention to the toxins that were all around me in my household cleaners, food storage (BPA) and in my food (pesticides and poorly raised proteins).
Some Gut Healing and Anti-inflammatory dietary basics:
Gut Healing
· Remove food that you are intolerant to. If there is a food that doesn’t make you feel your best after eating it – stop eating it. Milk and legumes are 2 common ones. Do they make you have gas or changes in your stools? If yes, they are probably not the best for you.
· Consume a minimum of ½ cup of Bone broth every day.
· Eat probiotic rich foods or take a multi-strain probiotic.
Anti-Inflammatory
· Diet rich in colorful vegetables – make sure to include the entire rainbow.
· Removal of gluten containing grains, refined sugars and industrial seed oils.
· Eat more fish and omega-3 rich foods.
Some other lifestyle hacks include:
· Get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep every night
· Drink enough water that your aren’t thirsty and your urine is light yellow
· Move you lymph by rebounding 5 -7 minutes daily and deep breathing
· Remove environmental toxins – household products and BPA
The sneezing and itchy-eyes of allergies are just your body’s way of telling your “something is going on in there.” Gut health is extremely important because 70% of your immune system lives right there. Make a plan to improve your gut health by drinking bone broth and eating probiotic rich foods. Lower the level of inflammation in your inflammation bucket by choosing just one thing you are going to work on. You don’t have to make a 180° turn like I did to make a difference. It all starts with one step, what is yours going to be?
I would love to hear your thoughts and what you have found to improve your allergies?
