Five things I wish people knew about allergies.
When you think of allergic reactions the main thing that most focus on is the trigger itself. This may be what type of allergen it is, for example environmental, food or pharmaceutical, and how it can be avoided. It is often seen as “you react to that so avoid it” end of story. But this is not always the whole picture, especially when it comes to IgG responses (more commonly known as intolerances) and the same principles often apply to IgA responses (labelled true allergies).
Yes the solution may lie exclusively in avoidance, especially in the case of circumstances such as bee stings or coeliac disease, but with many other “allergies” there can be a whole host of factors that may be exacerbating or creating the symptoms in the first place.
Intolerances may be transient: Sometimes our bodies are able to deal with a certain food or environmental trigger but only to a certain degree. Meaning that you are fine until you are exposed to a little too much and the proverbial straw breaks the camels back. This is often the case with allergies we “outgrew” as children, especially when we get to middle age when we may be dealing with increased stress, which puts added strain on the immune, digestive and lymphatic systems, having a knock on effect that reduces our ability to withstand the inflammatory response.
It may not be the trigger causing the response: There are certain foods that are harder for the body to digest and process, so when additional strain is put on those systems a deluge of “allergies” can ensue. For example, a patient may be prescribed new medications that are taxing certain liver pathways. They then start experiencing allergy-like effects to alcohol or foods such as those from the nightshade family (potato, peppers, tomatoes) as the liver is struggling with the added workload.
Intestinal permeability is key: The lining of our digestive system is, for the most part, only 1 cell thick and when this lining is irritated, inflamed or compromised this barrier can weaken, allowing whole particles straight into the bloodstream rather than being processed fully via the cell itself. This essentially starts alarm bells ringing in the immune system, triggering an inflammatory cascade that looks exactly like an allergic response.
Everything comes down to poo: Maybe TMI but here we are. How your digestive system is flowing is everything. Is it sluggish? bloated? do you get reflux? what is the frequency, consistency and colour of your bowel movements? This very basic information can give invaluable insights into how your body is processing what it ingests. It may be that you are appearing to react to, for example, mushrooms, when in fact you have a slight yeast overgrowth which the fungi are exacerbating symptoms of. Once the “root cause” is addressed the reaction ceases to occur.
What are you feeding your microbes?: Probiotics are often touted as a cure-all for most gut problems, and yes they can be very helpful but if you aren’t eating the foods that feed these microbes then the probiotic will not work as effectively and may not even work at all. Fibre is another very popular subject in the wellness space, and for good reason, but we need to be focusing on the variety of types of fibre rather than just the quantity we feed our guts, as the microbiome responds to type of fibre and adjusts its levels accordingly.
If you’d like more information, we’ll be delving into these points as well as others in a deeper way in my upcoming webinar “Allergies aren’t just about the allergen” on 20th October. Book here.