Allergies / Eczema / Autoimmune
- Jun 10, 2019
- 4 min read
We are facing an epidemic of allergies (60 million people), asthma (30 million people) and autoimmune disorders (24 million people). Autoimmunity occurs when your immune system gets confused and your own tissues get caught in friendly cross-fire. Your body is fighting something — an infection, a toxin, an allergen, a food or the stress response — and somehow it redirects its hostile attack on your joints, your brain, your thyroid, your gut, your skin or sometimes your whole body.
These are often addressed by powerful anti-inflammatory or immune suppressing medication and not by addressing the cause. Medicine as it is practiced today is like taking the battery out of a smoke detector while a fire burns down your house!
Around the age of twelve was when I developed my food allergies and eczema. This was on top of the recent asthma diagnosis.
My skin tone was blotchy as you can see in the picture below. I had super itchy spots all over my body and face that worsened when I would sweat. It was irritating and tended to fuel feelings of self-consciousness and anxiety which only perpetuated the cycle.
I tried everything my dermatologists recommended which simply ended up with me being dependent on steroid creams that made it less itchy but did not heal it permanently.
An estimated 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from eczema. It is considered an external symptom of an internal problem. Suppressing the symptoms with topical creams will not heal the problem. You must dig deeper and address the underlying cause, a malfunctioning immune system.
Eczema occurs when you experience inflammation, which is your body’s response to a perceived threat that puts your immune system in overdrive and ends up attacking your skin. Many people who have eczema also have asthma and allergies, which are also caused by inflammation and an overactive immune system. In fact, this is so common that doctors refer to this as the “atopic triad or terrible three.”
These 3 health conditions are very sensitive to environmental factors that could be a culprit for inflammation in the body. Most Americans, but especially children, have dozens of pesticides and other toxic compounds in their bodies.
I’ve often looked back and considered the environmental toxins that were present in my life around this time. I remember moving into a house that had just been tented (pesticides). The house was susceptible to mold in the closets which meant we were often managing this by scrubbing with bleach (fungicide). I practically lived at my friend’s house down the street where the parents smoked cigarettes (toxins) inside the home. Also, the city we lived in used crop duster planes to spray malathion (pesticides) into the air to control the mosquito population.
Trying my best to recall my health story has helped me piece together why and how my body reacted with new health issues at different stages of my life. These health conditions carried on into my adult years and impacted my quality of life in a variety of ways.
We certainly have a long way to go to clean up our toxic world but I have high hopes that we will continue to make positive changes so future generations can thrive. We can’t control everything of course but we have more power than we think. We vote with our wallets and at the voting booth for the kind of world we want to live in. I have faith we can do this together!
So, how do you target the root cause, balance inflammation and heal an overactive immune system? Here’s what the experts recommend + what worked for me. Keep in mind the final step was crucial to overcoming allergy + asthma symptoms.
Step 1: Remove
Avoiding foods that feed bad bacteria (and adding foods that feed good bacteria) can help restore balance to your gut. Remove inflammatory foods such as sugar, refined carbohydrates, processed and foods low in fiber. People with a high allergy rate further benefit when they remove dairy or other known allergens. Consider what products you put on and around your body too! Our skin is one of the largest organs and absorbs everything it comes into contact with. If the ingredients in the products we use are not safe to consume should we really be putting it on our skin? Seasonally a few times a year I make sure to detox to get rid of the chemicals and toxins that have accumulated in my body. My favorite way to do this is by choosing gut healing foods combined with detoxing herbs for 3 days. This incorporates the right about of fiber and water to get toxins out of the body. It also helps reset your body to crave foods that are good for you!
Step 2: Replace
Focus on adding foods high in antioxidants (found mostly in fruits and vegetables) and anti-inflammatory compounds (fatty fish, nuts, avocados, turmeric, etc). One of my favorite ways to nourish my whole body and especially my skin is by drinking green smoothies as often as possible.
Consider additional foods you can eat to reduce inflammation and keep your body hydrated/moisturized from the inside out. Prioritize good fats such as omega3s which are very effective at reducing inflammation in the body. Coconut oil and collagen powder are great add ins to coffee to give it a nutritional boost and benefit your skin too.
Step 3: Rebalance
A healthy microbiome protects your body from harmful microbes, toxins, and other undesirable substances from entering the body through the bloodstream. Therefore it is crucial to supplement with beneficial bacteria that heal the gut and keep your immune system strong. The final piece of the healing puzzle was optimizing the communication between my gut and my brain. This was the factor that allowed my body to self-correct and self-heal. Incorporating this step I was able to have the best lung capacity to truly overcome asthma, allergies and eczema.
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