My top 3 recommended solutions to use before and during allergy season to decrease your symptoms so you can still get outside and enjoy the glorious spring.:-)
Quercitin 1000mg 2X’s/day – it’s a flavonoid antioxidant that comes from plants and is a natural anti-histamine. Start taking right away, continuing throughout the allergy season. Jarrow makes a very effective product.
Bromelain—this enzyme comes from pineapple and if you take it on an empty stomach it gets absorbed and digests phlegm and mucous in the upper respiratory tract. Make sure to prior to eating, otherwise the enzyme works on your food and not your symptoms. Take 4-6 caps as tolerated when you have allergies. We recommend Integrative Therapeutics or Thorne.
Diamine Oxidase—the body makes this enzyme naturally to break down histamine. Supplement your body’s natural histamine response. My favorite is HistDAO by Xymogen. 4 caps every 4hrs as needed for congestion and runny nose.
I also stress keeping your head clear witha sinus rinse 2X’s/day using a neti pot or with the Neilmed Sinus Rinse. This helps to clear out the day’s allergens and can reduce inflammation.
You may consider cutting out dairy as well. Dairy can be mucogenic (mucous causing) in many people and likely isn’t helping to keep symptoms at bay during allergy season.
I’ve heard a lot of people getting relief with Allqlear, an Integrative Therapeutic product that contains quail egg, which can help with mast cell stabilization. I’m interested to learn if readers try it and how their bodies respond.
What if your allergies seem to get worse? It’s possible you have some immune dysfunction, which can be caused by things like mold or gut dysfunction.
70% of our immune system lives in the gut. Our microbiome is our strongest immune-modulator, decreasing immune dysfunction (allergy, inflammation, auto-immunity) and increasing good immune cells that fight off infection. One of the best things you can do to improve your immune function and decrease allergy and inflammation is to work on your microbiome. In a healthy human, we have more beneficial bacterial cells then we do human cells – isn’t that crazy?
So with that said, probiotics often help with allergies, in an indirect way. And even better, do a stool study to see what the diversity of your microbiome is and if there’s overgrowth of unhelpful bacteria, yeast, molds and parasites. With a comprehensive stool study, you can get rid of the bad stuff and replace with the good and heal the gut! This is one of the most important things you could ever do for long term, optimum health. As this helps us to forever decrease our inflammation and increase our good immunity.