Allergy season is upon us once again! This time of year and all through the summer months can be a particularly difficult time for those of us who suffer with seasonal allergies. Yes, I said “us” because I used to suffer with terrible allergies during the summer months! Antihistamines were my constant companion through the summer months and I hated the way I felt when I took them. The good news is that I discovered what was causing my immune system to be out of balance and I have not needed to take a single antihistamine for many years now. Taking a functional medicine approach to my allergies allowed me to support my immune system and work with my body instead of against it.

Allergies are a common problem today and the underlying issues is that the immune system is out of balance and having difficulty regulating itself. Your body is displaying an “inappropriate” response to the environment. I say this is inappropriate because seasonal allergies generally refer to grass, pollen and mold. Grass and pollen are not a threat to your body, so the immune system really should not be responding to these. As for mold, most forms of mold are also not a threat to your health and so the immune system should not be launching an allergic response.

The word allergy means; a hypersensitivity caused by exposure to a particular antigen (allergen). The key word here is “hypersensitivity” which means the immune system is overreacting! So the obvious (or not so obvious) solution is to help your immune system calm down and not be so sensitive to harmless antigens in your environment.

So at this point you might be asking how we can calm down the immune system and take some stress off it. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to change your diet; remove foods that are putting stress on your immune system. When I ran blood tests for food sensitivities (not food allergies) I found that certain foods were causing my immune system to overreact. Once I removed these foods from my diet I found that I no longer had an allergy response to the environment (my particular allergies were grasses and ragweed). We do offer food sensitivity testing in our Naperville office if you are interested in this approach to managing allergies by the way.

The reason removing these foods from my diet helped resolve my allergies was because my immune system became less reactive; meaning it was not so sensitive to allergens in the environment now. One explanation for how this works is the concept of cross-reactivity. This means that your immune system can confuse the environmental allergen with the foods you are sensitive or the other way around. For example if you have a grass allergy then your immune system might also react to apples or watermelon. Below I have listed some foods that can cause a cross-reaction in the immune system.

Cross-reacting foods for Grass and Ragweed

Grass: apple, cantaloupe, celery, chard, cherry, corn, honeydew, kiwi, orange, peach, peanut, peas, peppers, paprika, tomato, watermelon.

Ragweed: banana, cantaloupe, chamomile, cucumber, egg, honeydew, lettuce (iceberg), milk, mint, sunflower, squash, tomato.

This means that if you have a food sensitivity to apples and corn you might be fine all year until you are exposed to grass; then the allergy symptoms kick in! However, if you did not eat apples and corn during the summer months and you were exposed to grass, there is an excellent chance you would not now have an allergy response to the grass.

My food sensitivity testing indicated that my immune system overreacts to watermelon, cantaloupe and mint. So, when I removed these foods from my diet during the summer months, I no longer experienced allergies to grass or ragweed.  If I ate watermelon, cantaloupe or mint during the summer months my allergies would be terrible! Now if I had any of these foods during the winter month; no problems!

The idea here is that if you add the food sensitivity to the allergen you experience more allergy symptoms; it overloads the immune system. It is just too much for your immune system to cope with and it overreacts…become hypersensitive; allergy symptoms.

FOOD SENSITIVITY + ENVIRONMENTAL ALLERGEN = SEASONAL ALLERGIES

The good news is that you may not need to avoid the particular foods all year; just when you tend to have exposure to the environmental allergen. This would be entirely up to you, but I prefer not to put foods into my body that the immune system wants to attack.

If you suffer from allergies and would like to pursue a natural alternative to medication; diet is a good place to start. I consider making a few changes to my diet a very small price to pay to live without allergies.

If you would like more information on integrative medicine, functional medicine, Dr. Sexton or seasonal allergies, go to napervilleintegratedwellness.com

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources.