Hay fever and gut reactions
If hay fever symptoms are spoiling your May, consider looking into the relationship between allergic reactions and gut health. Mounting evidence is linking the health of your gut microbiome (that’s the vast ecosystem of microbes that populates your gastrointestinal tract) to allergies.
As seasonal allergies in general are on the rise in this country and are said to affect one in five people at some point during their lifetime, it begs the question why are so many people’s bodies overreact to what are essentially harmless compounds such as pollen. And it turns out that our gut bugs and the gut-immune axis provide part of the answer.
A healthy, diverse gut microbiome is associated with fewer environmental allergies, and also fewer food allergies. Whether your internal ecosystem of gut flora comprises a diverse array of thriving commensal bacteria will depend on a host of factors including daily diet, alcohol intake, exposure to medications, toxins, stress, and infections.
Track back to when you were a baby - one of the many roles of your microbes is to quickly “teach” your immune system to tolerate dietary proteins and other non-threatening allergens in the environment. This priming of the adaptive immune system starts in gestation and will be influenced by a host of factors including your mother’s microbiome which you essentially inherit, how you’re delivered, and whether you have sufficient exposure to allergens in the environment in your early days.
When the gut microbiome is compromised, there can be poor recognition of antigens. If the body sees a substance as a threat, the misguided immune system will launch a cascade of inflammatory compounds to attack and clear the antigen from the body.
One of these compounds is histamine which is responsible for the unpleasant symptoms of hay fever. Whilst there is a genetic component to histamine tolerance, interestingly people with poor gut health may not detoxify histamine so effectively from their bodies which may heighten symptoms. Another reason to pay attention to your gut!
I too suffered from horrendous hay fever which started during childhood and plagued my summers right through until I was thirty and started working on my gut health. Now, I typically only get a mere sniffle when the pollen count is at its height.
As a nutritional therapist with a special interest in gut health, there is plenty I can do support people with allergies to both help manage symptoms and identify and help address some of the underlying factors that are leading to allergic reactions in the first place. Please do talk to me if you wish to find out more.
Next steps
Do you struggle with your digestive health or related symptoms, and would you benefit a fresh approach to nutrition that takes into account your mind-body health and wellbeing? Please check out my Rebalance programme here.
