Do You Suffer from Spring Allergies?

For many people allergy season is really challenging time.  So many of us wait all winter for sun and warmth just to be hit with the discomfort and frustration of allergies.  For many of us, allergy season can really be a bummer!   Don’t give up!  There are great options that can relieve your symptoms as well as move your whole body towards greater health.

When you want to reduce or clear up your allergy symptoms it is important to think of your long game and your short game.  That means finding and addressing the core cause and making lifestyle changes to support a body that doesn’t have allergy symptoms as well as treating the immediate symptoms you currently have.  

What I have found in my many years of practice is that the most important issue to address is digestive health. Our digestive system is truly the center and core of our health.  If your digestive system is weak, you will notice that things that never bothered you – foods, or pollen, or pet dander will begin to create symptoms that never seemed to bother you before… This is especially true for people who never had allergies as a child who have noticed that these symptoms have occurred as they’ve aged.  In many cases it’s related to the health of their digestive system.

So one of the things that I find most helpful if you want to strengthening your digestion is to make your diet as clean as possible.  That would involve clearing the most obvious offenders which would be wheat, sugar, and milk, just for a few months to give your body the chance to repair itself.  Another great option would be to eliminate foods from your diet that are not foods. Those would be things that when you read the ingredients you find that you would need to be a chemistry major to understand what they are!  The cleaner your diet, the more that your food will support your health and the health of your body. The body can only handle a certain toxic load and once that is exceeded things that usually bother it a little began began to become a big problem.

Another thing that can be really effective for supporting a healthy digestive system is increasing fermented foods in your diet.  We have discussed the benefits of fermented foods many many times for a good reason – they support healthy levels of your micro biome. Your micro biome is the assorted  population of life supporting bacteria that inhabit your gut.  These bacteria help not only to bridge the gap between the food and your ability to absorb it.  In other words – they help your food keep you strong.

Making these changes will not create immediate results –  it may take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to notice changes in your health, so it can be helpful to have short term help while you heal.  One of the products we carry is called Allerplex and it can be very helpful for decreasing the severity of your allergic symptoms. The nice thing about Allerplex is that it is food-based so you won’t have any issues with your energy level.  We carry a lot of Allerplex during this time year so if you feel that this is something that could be helpful for you swing in and Kimberly, our office manager, can help you.  Of course, acupuncture can help alleviate stuffiness and pain of allergies as well.

Sometimes your body may need more support in it’s healing, in that case a specific herbal formula may be the best bet.  The body creates symptoms to give us messages to move us towards increased health and vitality.  Think of your symptoms as informational tools that can help you establish you to a healthier body and life.  If you need further support we are here to help!