Today I want to talk about eliminating allergies. Allergies are a common experience. Histamine is a major player in the inflammatory response (More about the inflammatory system here.). But simply addressing histamine symptoms, or avoiding foods because of a “histamine sensitivity” is not enough!
It will not address the root cause, and it is not a long-term solution! To eliminate an allergy or intolerance, the root cause must be addressed and healed. Today I want to talk about the steps you can take to allow your body to heal, resulting in your body reducing or eliminating inflammatory and allergic reactions.
4 Steps to Eliminating Allergies
Step 1: Avoid the substance (antigen) you are reacting to
When you first recognize a reaction to a substance, and before you have addressed healing the root cause, it’s helpful to reduce or eliminated your exposure to the offending substance(s). This doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment. If you work to address the root cause of your reaction, in most cases you will be able to return that antigen to your normal routine.
Step 2: Identify the root cause
Unless you want the removal of a particular substance to be permanent, the next thing to do is to address the root cause. The root cause is usually a combination of a leaky gut, an overpopulation of bad gut flora, a hyperactive immune system, and a malnourished body. These four things are usually related and overlapping, and for complete healing, all these categories must be addressed to some extent for reversal of symptoms to occur.
Step 3: Eat healing, nourishing and calming foods
Eating nutrient dense, easy-to-digest, healing foods is the quickest way to address the leak gut. The three key foods are meat stock, animal fat, and fermented foods. These are discussed in other posts, so to learn more, check out “Say No to Bone Broth,” The One About Fat, and various fermented food posts.
Meat Stock Meat stock (a variation on the popular Bone Broth) is prepared using meat, joint and bone, and cooked over a short time (less than 6 hours). It contains many healing nutrients, including glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, which help our bodies produce healing mucus. This allows the intestinal lining to repair and strengthen.
Animal Fat Animal fat is truly an amazing food! Primarily concentrated nutrients and healing cholesterol (yes, I said healing cholesterol, more on that here!) foods in this category allow your body to get an abundance of helpful nutrients with less work of digestion. Fat also provides essential fatty acids, and fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D E and K. Saturated and unsaturated fat are also necessary to make cell walls, firm and strengthen tissues, the brain and nervous system, and is used by the immune system to fight infections, repair damaged tissue, and resolve inflammation. And to top all that off, fat is also a gentle detoxer, especially of heavy metals stored in nervous tissue. Eating fat calms nervous tissue and the inflammatory system. This not only helps heal the root cause, but also improves allergy symptoms in the present.
Fermented Foods Fermented foods contain good microbes, which perform several roles in our bodies. First, they work on the food itself, pre-digesting it so the nutrients are more bio-available for our bodies. They also bind with toxins in the mouth and intestines in order to remove them from the body. And they can help re-educated the immune system. When the good microbes communicate with the immune system, the immune system learns (or re-learns) about what things should be responded to with inflammation (allergic reaction) and which substances are not threats. The immune system’s detection of perceived threats inside and outside the body can trigger the inflammatory system, in turn initiating or expounding allergic symptoms. With time, a properly-educated immune system will only respond to actual threats to the body, and not the lactose molecule (for example).
4. Help your body clean up
If you are in need to healing, then it is very likely that your body and liver are overwhelmed with toxins. In it's simplest definition, toxins are anything that are not helpful to the body at that time. In the case of allergies, too much histamine can fall into the category of a toxin. When left unchecked, these toxins cause continual damage in our bodies. In order to heal more quickly, we need to reduce the amount of toxins in our bodies as quickly as possible. This is done by stopping the inflow of toxins (remove processed foods from the diet and get rid of bad gut flora), supporting the liver (which is one of the chief detoxing organs), and using detox methods that don’t involve the liver (I call these gentle detox methods). Gentle detox methods include: a detox bath, juicing, sunbathing, eating animal fat, drinking water and minerals, oil pulling, and even doing enemas (especially coffee enemas)!
These four steps outline the key components of the GAPS healing protocol, and can be used to various degrees (casual to extreme) to bring different levels and speeds of healing. Your healing journey is yours. You alone can determine what the pace and priorities are. And journeys always occur in stages and seasons. Some seasons are more intense and focused. During these times the need for healing may be greater, or your healing may happen quicker. At other times your journey may appear to be slower, as your focus is more diverse, or the energy you give to healing is less. I want to be here to help you, no matter where you are on this stage. If I can be of any assistance to you (or if you want to find out how I can help), please contact me. Because
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
-African Proverb
Onward!