How to Defeat Allergies Using Your Gut

With spring just around the corner, many of us can look forward to getting outside and gardening or going for a bike ride with our kids or grandkids. Some of us, however, can also expect to deal with constant sneezing, sniffling and runny, itchy eyes.

While it’s common for folks to reach for the antihistamines and allergy pills, these medications only treat the symptoms and do not get to the root cause of your allergies.

What’s Your Gut Got to Do with It?

It may seem odd to you that the health of your gut directly affects the health of your upper respiratory tract, but the two systems are very much intertwined and have much in common. The respiratory system and digestive system are both immune barriers, and both work hard to protect the body from outside pathogens that could make us sick.

Our guts actually hold 80% of our immune system – an astronomical amount – so it makes sense that if our guts are unhealthy, our immune systems will not function optimally. When our guts are compromised, it can result in many chronic illnesses, including allergies that crop up each spring.

Allergies and Leaky Gut Syndrome

To really understand how poor gut health can result in allergies, we’ve got to talk about leaky gut. You may have heard of leaky gut and imagined all sorts of things based on its rather off-putting name, and your imagination wouldn’t have been far off from the reality.

Leaky gut, also known as intestinal permeability, is a condition where the lining of the GI tract becomes inflamed and more permeable than normal. This increased permeability allows undigested foods, yeasts, bacteria and other harmful microbes to leak into the blood stream that is normally very sterile. The result? The immune system launches an all-out attack on these invading toxins and this creates inflammation throughout the body.

This inflammation manifests in different ways for different people. For some it can result in joint pain and stiffness, for others it can cause skin rashes, digestive upset, brain fog, thyroid problems, and yes, seasonal allergies.

The Causes of Leaky Gut

Leaky gut is very common, and while some people experience digestive symptoms such as bloating, gas, constipation or diarrhea, many people have leaky gut but show no digestive upset.

So what causes this condition that in turn causes inflammation and a host of diseases?

Gluten

One of the biggest culprits is gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, spelt, barley, and other wheat-like grains. Today’s wheat is very different from the wheat our grandparents ate, mostly because it has been genetically altered, processed and stored in ways that make it unhealthy for consumption.

Oftentimes, simply removing gluten from the diet can have a profound and positive affect on seasonal allergies. You may also want to consider eliminating other foods which can wreak havoc on the gut such as dairy, soy, eggs, sugar and other grains.

Chronic Stress

Let’s face it, most people these days are under chronic stress because of longer work hours, lack of sleep, mounting bills, traffic, noise pollution, too much media, etc. This stress also leads to leaky gut and seasonal allergies.

Chronic stress on the body can also come from different things like eating too much sugar and processed foods and hormones that are completely out of whack. Metabolic factors are big contributors to leaky gut and seasonal allergies.

Imbalance of Gut Bacteria

And finally, one of the biggest factors that contributes to leaky gut and seasonal allergies is an imbalance of gut bacteria. Our guts are home to several pounds of bacteria (yes, several pounds) that play a large role in immune function. Thanks to stress, poor diets, and antibiotics, most of us have too much bad bacteria that are overwhelming the good guys. This imbalance contributes to leaky gut, inflammation and allergies.

If you want to fix your leaky gut you’ve got to get rid of as many triggers as you can. This means eliminating things like gluten, dairy, sugar and soy. It also means cleaning up your diet in general and trading in processed garbage for nutritious whole foods. Take care to alleviate as much stress as you can through mediation, rest and exercise.

You’ll also need to make sure your gut has enough beneficial bacteria by either taking a quality probiotic and/or eating plenty of fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt, and kefir.

Another Important Ingredient to Heal Leaky Gut

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word starch? You most likely think of the word in a negative way, your mind conjuring things like carbohydrates and elevated blood glucose, insulin spikes and weight gain. But there is a good kind of starch, a very good kind actually, called resistant starch.

Resistant starch (RS) is resistant to digestion and thus, travels all the way through the small intestine into the colon where it “feeds” beneficial colonic gut flora. This is important and what you don’t hear about often. While it’s important to cultivate your gut with beneficial bacteria, it is equally important to make sure that bacteria is fed so it can thrive and do its job.

Consuming RS also improves the integrity and total function of the lining of your gut, so none of those harmful toxins can leak out.

RS also expels bad bacteria. In this way consuming RS works in three powerful ways, decreasing the bad bacteria while feeding the good and fixing your mucous lining, all at the same time.

While you can get RS into your diet through certain foods such as raw potatoes, cooked and then cooled potatoes, green bananas, various legumes, cashews and raw oats, many people find it much easier to take a supplement.

I take a supplement called “Starch B-gone”. and the wonderful thing about Starch B-gone is not only does it help you get rid of the bad starch and feed the good starch, it also helps you shed extra pounds because it stops carbohydrates from being broken down into blood glucose so no insulin spike occurs. No excess insulin means no weight gain. This means you can “cheat” every once in a while and have those potato chips or ice cream and not have to worry about packing on extra pounds.

Starch B-Gone is about as close to a magic pill as we have ever seen, and you can try it today risk free. Click Here to give it a try!

If you or a loved one suffer from seasonal allergies, it’s time to get to the root cause and fix your leaky gut by eliminating harmful foods and stress, eating more live-cultured foods like kefir and kimchi, and feeding those good bacteria so they can do their job. If you do this, you can finally enjoy the wonders of spring without all of the usual sneezing and sniffling!