Allergies – ’tis the season! I walked out of my office to get in my car and it was covered from head to toe with yellow pollen. I had the office window open, and my counter-top was also covered with pollen. It’s beautiful to see all the flowers coming out and the trees budding, but for a lot of us, that yellow blanket of pollen means misery. So, I want to go over some holistic ways of addressing your overall wellness that will help alleviate those allergy symptoms.
Allergies typically present as upper respiratory symptoms. It feels like it’s in your head, your sinuses, and you have dry, itchy or watery eyes, red eyes, a runny nose, a sore throat, a chronic cough, and/or you are sneezing. It can be exhausting. It may be that one of worst symptoms of allergies is you’re just so tired. Did you realize that allergies have a much deeper root in your body than simply all up in your head? Chronic persistent allergies are related to chronic inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is systemic throughout your body. And a key player in systemic inflammation is your liver. Therefore, your liver health plays a critical role in modulating or balancing your inflammatory response.
Inflammation is an immune response. With chronic inflammation your immune system is in overdrive. It’s on high alert for toxins and compounds that pose a threat to the body. Now introduce allergens, which simply put are, things your immune system overreacts to. The allergens become a tipping point causing you to have a histamine release. Histamines are released from mast cells in your body and cause a series of reactions in your body resulting in classic allergy symptoms. To help your body quell allergy symptoms, it is important to look at two things: taming the inflammation and supporting your liver.
Up until now, your primary approach for allergies may have been to avoid allergens as much as possible and take antihistamines. You know as well as I do that sometimes antihistamines take the edge off, but they don’t quite get the job done fully. Plus, you feel groggy because antihistamines make you drowsy. It is important to know that lowering inflammation and supporting the liver can be tremendously helpful in reducing allergy symptoms.
There are a couple of key ways that people have found that helps them so much that allergy symptoms are dramatically reduced, while other ways can help by providing support. The first thing you can do is eat an anti-inflammatory diet. Look at your diet. Think about what would be an inflammatory diet. An inflammatory diet is a diet high in processed foods, sugars, refined carbohydrates, such as white foods like white flour, white pasta, pizza, candy, cake, sugar, and white rice. An anti-inflammatory diet is the opposite of that. You want to switch those white foods out for complex carbohydrates: brown rice, quinoa, whole grains. Complex carbohydrates are going to be much more health producing and much less inflammatory. You also want vegetables…lots of vegetables. Additionally, eat some fruit, nuts, and seeds, and healthy types of proteins. The best meats you can buy are local grass-fed organic meats. Anything along those lines is going to be much healthier than grabbing a burger at a fast food joint day after day or even many days a week. If you suffer with chronic allergies, consider focusing on an anti-inflammatory diet with plant-based foods, grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, and pasture-raised poultry.
Secondly, to bring down that over-reactive immune response and to support your liver, there are key vitamins or supplements that can be very, very helpful. I’m going to highlight some of my favorites for this.
Vitamin C: Vitamin C is so helpful. It not only strengthens your immune system, but it also helps to bring down some inflammation. You find vitamin C in citrus fruits, broccoli, red peppers, and kale. A lot of plant foods provide vitamin C. Sometimes it’s even helpful to buy a high-quality vitamin C supplement if you’re not getting enough through your foods. Vitamin C is definitely a key player and is a very important antioxidant for your overall wellness, as well as for your liver health.
Vitamin D: Here is another key player for your immune system, and it helps to bring down inflammation. It’s also really important because it’s an immune modulator, which means that it helps your body balance immunity. If your body needs the immune system to ramp up, vitamin D supports that. In cases of autoimmunity, vitamin D helps to tame it. The key with vitamin D is that it’s tough to find in your food. You can find it through egg yolks, and a couple of other foods in moderation. Vitamin D supplements are available, but the very best way to get vitamin D is sunlight. Your body makes vitamin D! Go outside and get some sunlight. If you’re not prone to burning, you want to get out for about 20 minutes before you put sunscreen on. By doing so, that will help your body produce the right amount of vitamin D. If you’re not in the sun, a vitamin D supplement does make sense.
Turmeric: We’ve all heard about turmeric being anti-inflammatory. It’s that bright, yellow spice often used in curries. The active ingredient in turmeric is called curcumin. Curcumin is very, very anti-inflammatory. Because it’s so effective as an anti-inflammatory, it’s even used for things like joint health, joint pain relief, and overall pain reduction. Although, turmeric can be kind of tough to absorb; the bio-availability isn’t great. If you’re using it as a spice when cooking make sure to also include a fat. Use a healthy fat, such as olive oil, avocado oil, or ghee, which will help to increase the absorption of turmeric. Additionally, black pepper also increases the absorption of turmeric. Excellent quality curcumin supplements will have black pepper in them because it helps to increase absorption.
Quercetin: This polyphenol comes from certain plants like kale, broccoli, spinach, even apples and onions. Quercetin is amazing because it is a natural antihistamine. It will naturally start to reduce some of those allergy symptoms. Not only does it support your immunity in a big way, but it is also gut-healing! I always have quercetin in my cupboard. You can get it through food, but I find that if I’m starting to catch a cold, or if I’m experiencing allergy symptoms, I always turn to quercetin. Love it.
LivClear II: LivClear II is a supplement containing curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric) as well as a number of vitamins and very potent antioxidants that support your liver health. It’s from a company called Nutritional Frontiers. Nutritional Frontiers carries a LivClear I and LivClear II. I prefer LivClear II. I use it for certain clients to target different liver-supporting concerns.
The right dosages and combinations are very important, so make sure you are speaking to a health professional before starting any protocol. This blog post is intended for educational purposes only and does not replace medical advice.
What I’ve found is when we support the liver, and help the liver to be healthy, the reduction in allergy symptoms is amazing.
I hope that as you see the pollen all over your car for the next few weeks, that you will be better armed and able to support your body from a holistic standpoint and bring down and tame some of those symptoms.