How to Prevent Allergies Without Drugs

I used to be tormented by spring allergies.  My home is in Charlotte, NC where we are blessed with many weeks of spring flowers and enough pollen to turn all the cars and houses yellow.

My doctor told me to take allergy medicine, and so for a couple decades, I just assumed my only option was to suffer through the season. That’s what everyone does, right?

Today my pollen allergy is gone and I never used a single drug. I can drive with the windows open and enjoy the smell of spring flowers.

Want to know what I did? Here’s how to prevent allergies without drugs.

Allergies can go away permanently

I didn’t set out to get rid of allergies.  Rather, I was doing research and making nutrition changes to fix a weight problem, insulin resistance, acid reflux and trouble sleeping.

As the trees began to bloom with flowers, I braced myself for the annual punishment, but the allergies never came. Wait! Allergies I’ve had my entire adult life can go away!?! Is that even a thing? Turns out, it is.

I wanted to find out what had happened, so I hopped on the internet.  What I found was a growing number of doctors addressing the root causes of allergies instead of just treating the symptoms.  They are helping patients totally get rid of pollen, and other common allergies, by eliminating the root cause.

They advise the exact same diet changes I stumbled onto. And when I checked the blog and Facebook feedback from patients, I found many have experienced the same healing I did.

Pollen allergies are a SYMPTOM

I learned that allergies are actually a SYMPTOM of an autoimmune response that stems from hidden food sensitivities and chemical exposures (a.k.a. “environmental toxins”), mostly from personal care products.

Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, is Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He’s also a nine-time #1 New York Times bestselling author and is dedicated to tackling the root causes of diseases.

He explains, “Many people don’t realize that they have sensitivities to foods most prevalent in our SAD (standard American diet). The more we eat volatile foods, the more risk they pose to our immune system. Eventually, if we over consume some of these foods we may develop a low grade response to them which causes systemic inflammation. The most common are gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy and yeast. Peanuts and nightshade vegetables are fairly common too but seen more in people with autoimmune disease. The biochemical response is different than a true food allergy which is actually more acute and immediate. Because a food sensitivity tends to be delayed it can be quite difficult to nail down.”

How do you know you have a food sensitivity? You have allergies.

Simple steps from doctors to heal a pollen allergy

Here’s a summary of the formula a number of doctors published to fix a pollen allergy:

1. Eat a diet of nutrient dense real food.  The goal is to eliminate foods that activate the autoimmune response that results in inflammation and allergies.  Click HERE to receive my complete elimination diet checklist for free!
2. Heal your gut (more below). This comes from eating nutrient dense real food and avoiding environmental toxins that harm gut health. The Wellness Repair Diet is optimized for gut healing, but I also have a post called 4 Steps to Heal Your Gut and Why This Will Heal Your Body.

You can also help speed gut healing along with smart supplementation. Here are some suggestions I gathered from the doctors:

Curcumin – Found in turmeric, but not very bioavailable in that form
Zinc
Antioxidants – from fresh fruits and vegetables
Vitamins A, C, E, D (A, D and E should be taken with a meal that contains fat.)
Selenium
Fish oil
L-glutamine powder

Allergy healing begins in the gut

Dr. Aviva Romm published an excellent article called 3 Steps to Make Your Allergies Go Away… FOREVER!

Dr. Romm explains the gut and allergy connection:

“All of the symptoms associated with allergies are signs of inflammation: redness, swelling, and itching, for example. To get rid of allergies, you have to get rid of inflammation and hyper-reactivity. The place to start is in your gut.

One of the major jobs of your digestive system is to provide an interface between the external world (foods, allergens, bacteria, etc.) and your bloodstream. It does this in the stomach by using natural digestive acids to break down potentially allergenic proteins and in the intestines via a layer of barrier cells that prevents these proteins from getting into your blood stream. You also have a whole host of special bacteria in your gut, as well as immune cells, whose job it is to break down and get rid of proteins and other molecules that can cause you to get sensitized to them, leading to gut – and systemic – inflammation.

When you are taking medications for reflux (like a PPI such as Prilosec) this takes out the first line of defense – your stomach acid. When your gut barrier gets weakened from chronic exposure to foods that irritate your gut, or when the good bacteria get out of balance from antibiotics, you can develop a leaky gut. Foreign proteins get into your system and place your body on red alert to react to many triggers in your environment.

So the first step to quieting down your body’s over reactivity is to heal your gut. This will reduce both seasonal allergies and common food sensitivities.”

The very first step to resolve a pollen allergy

It’s simple to describe the plan: Eliminate the foods you are sensitive to along with any chemical exposures that harm your gut.

It’s another matter to know where to begin. To make it easier, I created a free elimination diet checklist plus another checklist that tells you what to do in the first 24 hours. You can download them right now and be on your way to an allergy free life in less than a minute.

Be aware that there may be side benefits of easy weight loss without feeling hungry, increased energy, better mood and improved mental focus.

Please share this on social media to help alleviate the suffering of others you love.

Thanks for reading and sharing!

Jeff

Additional Resources

Dr. Mark Hyman – Inflammation: How to Cool the Fire Inside you

Dr. Amy Myers, MD – How to Heal Your Gut Naturally

Dr. Vikki Peterson says she has observed the gut connection to autoimmune diseases clinically for years and is excited about new research from the University of Maryland to back it up.

Dr. Michael Klaper MD.  This one is entertaining.