Seasonal Allergies Are The Worst. Here's What You Need To Know For An Easier Spring

This time of year in the western hemisphere is magical. You can feel nature coming alive, waking up from its long winter slumber. But as spring blossoms around us—as beautiful as it is—many of us also have seasonal allergies to worry about this time of year.

The FDA estimates that there are approximately 36 million people in the United States who suffer from seasonal allergies. Seasonal allergies are also sometimes called hay fever, or, by their technical (and very fancy) name, allergic rhinitis. It's important to know that allergic rhinitis technically takes two different forms:

Seasonal: This type of allergy is triggered by mold spores or pollens from grass, trees, and weeds, which happen more during changes of season.

My role as a functional medicine practitioner is to get to the root cause of health problems. And what I find commonly among my patients is that seasonal allergies are more than just a change in the weather or a little extra pollen. Ultimately, allergies happen as a result of the immune system overreacting to an external factor, whether it is a food you eat, a toxin you are exposed to, or in this case, a change in the environment and increase in pollen in the air.

In order to really work toward overcoming seasonal allergies, we need to dive deeper into how the immune system works. Close to 80 percent of your immune system is located in your gut microbiome, and therefore, when your microbiome is weakened, so is your immune system. Many things can alter your gut health, including a poor diet, stress, and increased toxin exposure. This results in increased gut permeability—also known as leaky gut—inflammation, and an imbalance between good and bad bacteria.

Once again, it all comes back to gut health. In fact, in my clinic I have seen many patients' seasonal allergies start to alleviate as soon as they start healing their gut. The take-home here? Bad or worsening seasonal allergies might be why a patient comes to see me in the first place, but they rarely end up being the main issue once I start looking under the surface.

Food plays one of the biggest roles in your gut health. Everyone knows that an overload of sugar, gluten, or other processed junk foods can seriously affect your microbiome. But I've seen even the healthiest foods cause inflammation and problems in people. An elimination diet is a great way to discover what foods your body loves and what foods your body hates in order to come up with a real-food plan that works for you personally to promote sustainable healing.

One of the biggest things you can do to support your gut is to actually avoid antibiotics, prescriptions, and other OTC medications as these can further compromise your gut. Since antibiotics, for example, work to kill off bacteria, they can't differentiate between good and bad bacteria and can end up eradicating both. Again, while sometimes these can be necessary, such as in the case of an unavoidable sudden exposure in life-threatening allergies, you have to ask yourself, Am I just looking for short-term relief or long-term healing?