“All Disease Begins in the Gut” – Hippocrates
If you suffer from allergies, you’re likely taking an over-the-counter or prescription allergy medication. Unfortunately, this type of treatment won’t do anything to address the underlying cause of your allergies. Probiotics will. Anyone living with chronic allergies has both a compromised immune system and a malfunctioning digestive system.
Probiotics are the live, active cultures found in fermented foods. Fermented foods and probiotic supplements not only help treat your allergies from the inside out, they can help improve your digestive and mental health as well.
The Root Cause of Allergies
In my 30 years of practice, I have found that a large majority of my patients with allergies have a condition called leaky gut syndrome.
In leaky gut syndrome, the lining of the gut develops gaps, allowing undigested food, toxins, bacteria, and metabolic wastes to enter your bloodstream, triggering a chronic, hyper-sensitive immune response.
How Probiotics Treat Allergies
The key to eliminating the chronic allergic response caused by a hyper-vigilant immune system lies in probiotics. Probiotics treat allergies by healing your damaged digestive system, which decreases inflammation, stabilizes your immune system, and strengthens your gut lining. Once your immune system returns to a calm and more stable state, you’ll find the sniffling, sneezing, post-nasal drip, and other allergy symptoms often resolve on their own.
Probiotics Heal and Chronic Digestive Disease
Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and gastrointestinal reflux disease affect approximately 62 million people worldwide. In a 21st century world of modern medicine, this is staggering. Chronic digestive diseases are primarily caused by depleted/abnormal gut flora.
Abnormal gut flora is caused by:
- Toxic Diet
It seems the more technologically advanced we become, the lazier and less educated we become about proper nutrition. Most of the food we eat today was not on your great-grandparent’s shelf. What we have now is an incredible array of easy, convenience food-like-products that have little to no nutritional value. These foods are completely toxic to your body and destroy your immune system.
Microwaveable meals, canned meals, snack cakes, “diet” foods, soda, candy, bread, boxed meals, breakfast cereal, and processed meats are all examples of food-like-products that may taste good but wreak havoc with your overall health.
- Birth Control Pills
The invention of the birth control pill was an important part of the sexual revolution in the 1960’s. Recent discoveries, however, might have women rethinking their preferred method of protection. Birth control pills have been shown to change the homeostatic conditions of the bacterial cultures within your gut. They also alter your intestinal pH, making it more alkaline, which encourages the overgrowth of yeast and pathogenic bacteria.
- Excessive Antibiotic Use
Excessive antibiotic use during the first few years of life often sets children up for lifelong digestive problems and allergies. This is because antibiotics do not differentiate between good and bad bacteria, they just destroy everything.
- Acid Blockers
If you’re living with acid reflux disease, one of the worst things you can do is take acid blockers. Acid reflux is often caused sometimes caused by too little acid in the body, not too much. A more ideal treatment for chronic acid reflux is probiotics and digestive enzymes. Over-use of acid blockers deteriorates hydrochloric acid, which disrupts digestion and allows pathogenic bacteria to proliferate in your gut.
- Vaccinations
United Kingdom physician, Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, founder of the GAPS diet, advises against vaccinations for children with compromised gut flora. She states that children with abnormal gut flora have a compromised immunity and therefore should not be vaccinated as the preservatives in vaccines only worsen gut and neurological health.
The Gut-Brain Connection and Mental Health Disorders
When someone presents with unusual behavioral problems, the first course of action is often psychiatric medication. This approach only treats the symptoms but does nothing to address the gut, the common denominator in many psychiatric conditions. What’s worse, most of the symptoms of these mental health disorders are only temporarily relieved by drugs.
After a short while, tolerance builds, side-effects set in, and the conditions often worsen.
In my opinion, this conventional approach to psychiatric illness is severely flawed. The sad fact is few psychiatrists are trained to understand the gut-brain connection. Within your gut lies your enteric nervous system or your “second brain.” When your intestinal flora is depleted or abnormal, it affects your emotions by interfering with healthy serotonin function.
Studies have shown that women who regularly ate probiotic-rich yogurt performed better on psychological tests involving emotional cognition.
More Health Benefits of Probiotics
In addition to treating allergies and healing a ravaged digestive system, probiotics have also been shown to be quite effective in the treatment of:
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Type I Diabetes
- Lupus
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic Urinary Tract Infection
- Eczema and Psoriasis
- Osteoarthritis
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
Probiotics are beneficial to many patients with a chronic pain or autoimmune condition due to their ability to calm an overactive immune system and ease inflammatory response.
The Best Sources of Probiotics
- Breastmilk
The best way to prevent your child from developing allergies is to breastfeed during the first two years of life. Breastfeeding ensures your child gets large doses of healing probiotics to seal his gut, nourish his body, and strengthen his immune system.
- Yogurt
Organic yogurt offers a good source of gut-healing probiotics. Be sure to choose an organic variety free of added sugars and food dyes.
- Sauerkraut & Kimchi
Sauerkraut & kimchi are two of the most potent sources of probiotics.
- Milk Kefir
Milk kefir is also a good and inexpensive source of probiotics that you can make yourself at home. Drink milk kefir on an empty stomach one hour to two hours before meals for best results.
- Kombucha
Kombucha is a fizzy, fermented drink you can also make at home. Because of its naturally carbonated consistency, it can easily replace dangerous, aspartame-laced diet soda.
Invest in High-Quality Probiotics
Diamond Nutritional’s Ultra Probiotic Formula
For patients with digestive trouble and chronic allergies, I always recommend a high-dose probiotic.
Diamond Nutritional’s Ultra Probiotic Formula gives your immune system a powerful boost. Unlike other probiotics, which only contain 1 or 2 active cultures in a low-dose capsule, each packet of Ultra Probiotic Formula contains 225 billion CFUs (colony-forming units) complete with six unique probiotic strains.
These strains include lactobacillus plantarum, lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacterium lactis, lactobacillus salivarius, lactobacillus casei, and bifidobacterium bifidum.
I recommend you take the Ultra Probiotic formula for 3 months to repopulate your gut and heal your allergies. After that, I recommend switching to a maintenance dose in the form of the probiotic listed below.
Diamond Nutritional’s Probiotic Formula
If you’ve been living with allergies and/or digestive disorders for a long time, your gut will not experience the healing it need from probiotic-rich foods alone.
This is why, for my patients with allergies, I recommend my Diamond Nutritional’s Probiotic Formula. Unlike many store-bought probiotics which may contain as few as 1-3 billion single-strain bacteria, this probiotic formula contains 22 billion live, active colony forming units to repopulate your gut and build a strong defense against intestinal disease.
This complete formula contains lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus paracasei, bifidobacterium lactis, bifidobacterium bifidum, lactobacillus plantarum, lactobacillus rhamnosus, saccharomyces boulardii.
Don’t just live with chronic allergies or cover up the symptoms with drugs, heal your gut from the inside out with probiotics!
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