You wake up one day in spring with red eyes and a congested voice and you say to yourself: “allergies again”, as if the symptoms you observe were a disease. This word game is not accidental. We are conditioned by thousands of advertisements a day to equate illnesses with their symptoms. Headache, back pain, bronchitis, eczema, arthritis, tinnitus, asthma, high blood pressure, over and over again – these are usually not illness itself, but signs of illness. The belief is that temporarily, by covering the signs, we have cured the disease. The belief is that by naming the signs, the disease has been identified.
You have a headache and what they tell you on TV – and even your doctor – is to take a Tylenol or some Ibuprofen, whatever it takes to eliminate the pain, knowing in advance that the pain was not the cause of the problem. The headache had a reason, it was a sign of something else. Neck spasm, intoxication, emotional stress, sinus allergies, trauma, misaligned posture, medications, chemical sensitivity, overwork, dehydration, hunger – the pain can come from many sources, and as soon as the effect, the pain returns. So, the solution is to keep taking more pills.
Table of Contents
What are allergies?
Allergies are not watery eyes or a stuffy nose. Allergies are reactions to irritants. Something strange is causing the body’s responses to cleanse itself. It’s like walking behind a smoke-filled bus when it starts. You breathe in the smoke and start coughing and feel like you’re choking on your eyes full of tears. That is an allergic response. For example, human beings are allergic to bus emissions: the eyes immediately become watery to clean themselves, the cough reflects forcing the toxic gases out before they are inhaled, etc., and everything happens in an instant.
Tolerance is an adaptation to stress. When we get used to an irritant, the body finally gives up trying to expel it. Like bus smoke, after a few weeks or months of breathing in the fumes of every day, the body does not work as hard. The sensitive mucous membranes of the mouth and nose stiffen a bit, and the body learns to “take it.” It is less and less sensitive to a poison. It does not mean that it will not kill him, but it only means that the body is getting used to that degree of being poisoned. The irritant is no longer eliciting as strong a response as the cleaning it used to do.
The same goes for someone who is learning to smoke cigarettes. He coughs and chokes at first, but soon grabs onto it. The body’s ability to rid itself of toxins gradually weakened.
Cold medicines.
We have all heard of antihistamines. Pills and sprays that unclog a stuffy nose. These work by blocking histamines. Histamines are produced by our white blood cells to activate protective mechanisms, such as congesting the nose, making our eyes watery, and shutting down digestion. Allergy medicine is usually an antihistamine, which strangely interferes with the body’s normal attempts to protect itself. The mouth, nose and eyes – that is the first line of defense.
When antihistamines block these normal responses from happening, the irritant or allergen or antigen is allowed more into the body than it ever would have. This is a side effect of antihistamines. You can be thankful that you can breathe again. The problem wasn’t the stuffy nose or the watery eyes, the problem was the allergen: the irritant. Antihistamines do not touch the underlying cause, but will only suspend the body’s ability to respond with its normal compensatory mechanisms. Result: tolerance which is the same as toxicity. It is as if you are driving on the highway and suddenly you hear a horrendous noise coming from the engine. So, you turn up the volume on the radio in order to cover up the noise.
What causes allergies?
The allergy treatment approach should be the elimination of the fundamental stimuli of the obstruction of the paranasal sinuses and the runny nose and eyes. First, identify the causative factor. For some it may be cat hair, dust, pollen, shellfish, wool, etc. However, many people can be around all of them and not react. Genetics is usually an answer, but it is usually heard more as an excuse when you do not have the real knowledge. The reality is that with all the overload of “tolerances” (toxicity) that we have acquired in our body through what we eat, smell and smear, among other things, we have greatly compromised our immune system that our body reacts increasingly intolerant to various elements.
Reactivity threshold.
Have you ever been to a grocery store and noticed how the little one’s yell at their mother to buy them all those refined foods (salty and sugary, solid or drinks) that they have for sale and that they know through the advertisements on television? The worst of all is that without knowing that they all contain toxic ingredients, they buy them.
Children are getting fatter, sicker, and with attention deficit problems. These problems about allergy, obesity and neurological development, are already documented in all the relevant scientific statistics in the world.
Processed foods cannot be digested.
This is the key idea of this article: refined processed foods cannot be digested. When a child is born, his tract and blood are clean and clear. As you begin to eat all this food that cannot be metabolized, residual sludge builds up in your digestive tract and in your blood. Let’s call this accumulation of toxic charge.
Let’s say there is a level of toxicity below which the child does not react to processed foods: they are without asthma, watery eyes, runny nose, skin rashes, etc., but over time the toxic load accumulates up to the point where one day you cross the line, exceed the threshold, and now the child reacts – any kind of allergic reaction can occur. By this time the patient has developed an accumulated toxic food load that has exceeded the body’s ability to deal with it – to break it down and process it. We say that you have reached the threshold of reactivity – and that it is the end of childhood, in a health sense.
Asthma: result of accumulation of toxic load.
Result: asthma, allergies, skin conditions, cough, bronchitis, chronic fatigue, lack of development, etc. This is when the child is taken to the doctor for consultation and in just fifteen minutes, he declares that the child has an “allergy” that is due to a genetic deficiency, and so on. Mothers of many children with these problems will know better what this means. From two to three, the child is classified as allergic and will have to take different medications that he may have to take for years if he also has another complication, such as asthma.
Unfortunately, there was no mention of the cereal box from the supermarket, or of the 4 flour donuts the child eats for breakfast or the 4 sodas he has during the day or the ice cream he has for dessert after dinner. None of those are taken into the equation without knowing that this is basically the root problem.
Toxic load build-up.
So, we have a different idea, besides the drugs. Break down and remove the toxic sludge that has accumulated in the blood from all these years. First get below the threshold, and then eliminate the toxic load altogether.
What do 99% of allergy sufferers have in common? The undigested food. Undigested food accumulates in the digestive tract, in the blood, in the tissues, organs and joints. It remains for months and years and cannot be dislodged by any of the body’s methods. And the last and most persistent of these methods is the inflammatory response – the body’s attempt to attack and expel the intruder.
Toxic load leads to enzyme and flora deficiency.
The chronic accumulation of undigested food gives two main signs of deficiency in the body: enzymes and intestinal flora.
Enzymes.
Enzymes are necessary for the breakdown and digestion of food. Without them, the body makes a valiant effort to use its own digestive enzymes to do the job. The problem is that many of the foods we eat today are completely new to the human species in the last 100 years. New chemicals and preservatives have been introduced into our food supply to flavor and preserve. The fats, rancidity, and oxidants in French fries are too foreign to our bodies. Our bodies cannot break them down. After some effort, the body gives up. That is the main reason older people have a hard time removing. And many young people too.
Flora.
Flora means good bacteria. A normal colon should have almost 3 kilos of good bacteria at all times. They are also called probiotics, and include species such as Lactobacillus, L. salivarius, Acidophilus, and many others. Your job is the final phase of digestion. Without them, food spoils in the colon.
Rotten food becomes cemented within the inner lining folds of the colon, mucosal cells are destroyed, preventing normal function, and proper evacuation is eventually blocked. Putrid food leaks into the bloodstream, going anywhere it can in the body.
The world authority on probiotics, described flora as the second immune system. It was referring to the ability of flora to remove a toxic or allergenic stimulus – undigested food – from the body. Understanding this simple concept is the key to understanding the essential dynamics between a healthy colon and the end of allergies. With rare exceptions, allergies simply cannot coexist in a body that has a healthy colon.
The probiotic flora – the good bacteria – are fragile life forms existing in the normal body in a dynamic balance together with pathological bacteria, fungi and viral forms. These good bacteria are killed by the following agents, among others:
- Antibiotics we take.
- Antibiotics in the meat we eat.
- Antacids, such as Zantac, Tagamet, etc.
- Ibuprofen and paracetamol.
- Over the counter drugs.
- White sugar.
- Carbonated drinks.
- Antihistamines.
- Chlorinated drinking water.
- Fluoridated water.
- Coffee.
There’s a solution?
If you can admit that you are really tired of your allergies, experiment with your body if it is in the conditions that allow you to eliminate certain foods from your diet and include others. As we have said, allergies are basically the consequence of an immune system compromised by poor eating habits and taking care of the body. You can start to leave certain foods that are the ones that contribute the most to our body being overloaded with toxins that cannot be eliminated easily, and along with this, have a healthier diet free of products loaded with toxic ingredients offered by the food industry .
Start by eliminating these foods for a month or 2.
- Dairy products.
- Refined sugar, flour, salt (the 5 white poisons).
- Industrialized, canned, packaged processed foods.
- Cooking foods with trans fats.
- Gluten.
- Sodas.
- Caffeine.
Dairy free means anything that contains cow’s milk: cheese, butter, no Alfredo sauce, no yogurt, no ice cream, no commercial white cream toppings, no buttermilk.
No white sugar means: no soda, no donuts, cookies, cakes, no ice cream, etc.
Include this in your new eating habits.
- Eat plenty of salads with your meals. Salads with green leafy vegetables 2 times a day
- Making green juices daily.
- Eat with the 80-20 rule, 80% uncooked and raw food, and 20% lightly cooked in a healthy way.
- Drink enough filtered water.
- Using natural beauty products.
Consider doing colonic cleansings to help your intestine get rid of waste that is not eliminated in bowel movements and is rotten food. And always rely on a specialist to guide you through this detoxification stage. Do not self-medicate, and if you are going to try to make a change for your recovery, always do it with the help of a functional (or holistic) specialist who will guide you appropriately.