It has begun. Patients coming into our clinic have already been telling us about their allergies and allergy symptoms, and this is just the beginning of the season! Allergy season is among us, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, you don’t have symptoms yet. If you know you typically get allergy symptoms every year, now is the perfect time to start getting down to the root causes of your allergies. How do we determine the cause of your allergies? Lab testing.
Allergies and Your Immune System
However, before we get into lab testing, I would like to briefly cover the immune system as it relates to allergies. Imagine your immune system is like a hornet’s nest. If you’re not poking at the nest, those bees will not bother you. The bees are just flying around, doing their own thing, and they’re not causing problems. Once you start to poke at that nest, what’s going to happen? Those bees are going to be flying all over the place and causing a lot of trouble. Our immune system is quite similar to this analogy. If you’re not constantly poking at your immune system, then you less likely to experience allergy symptoms. Once we start poking at it, it’s going to start reacting to harmless aspects of our environment, like pollen, and then we get allergy symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, scratchy throat, itchy ears, and itchy eyes.
What’s Bothering Your Immune System?
Food sensitivities, which are basically an immune reaction to certain foods, are big irritants to our immune system. When you eat foods you’re sensitive to, your body produces antibodies called immunoglobulins (Ig), which bind to certain foods and cause inflammation, which can lead to digestive symptoms, headaches, brain fog, joint pain, depression and more. There are 3 main types of immunoglobulins that can be tested with blood work, and these are IgG, IgA, IgE If you have any IgE antibodies, you will immediately develop symptoms. When it comes to IgG and IgA, these reactions can be delayed, so if you eat a food today, you may not develop symptoms up to 3 days later.
Allergists will only look at IgE allergies to things like food, pollen and mold. Don’t get me wrong, knowing your IgE allergies are very helpful, but it doesn’t give us the full picture. This is why we want to look into IgG and IgA as well. Why? Because if you’re eating something every day that your immune system is reacting to, this is going to make your immune system more “on edge.” The more on edge it is, the more likely it’s going to respond to harmless substances like pollen.
This is why we also want to look into IgA and IgG antibodies to various types of foods. Why? If you’re eating something every single day that your immune system is reacting to, this is going to lead to gut inflammation and subsequent immune dysregulation, one root cause of allergies. Your immune system is on edge and it’s going crazy like that bees nest we’ve been poking at. Now it’s hyper-reactive, and going to start attacking harmless substances like pollen!
The Key to Reduce Allergies
If you want to get your allergies under control without having to rely on allergy medications for the rest of your life, we must address any immune irritants, like food sensitivities. At Interactive Health Clinic, we have the ability to assess you for IgE allergies to mold, pollen and food, as well as IgG and IgA food sensitivities for more than 200 different foods and spices. We can also look at a special blood marker called Matrix Metalloproteinase 9, which is produced by our immune cells in response to high histamine levels. It’s a great way for us to assess how irritated your immune system is as it relates to allergy season. We believe in personalized medicine, and lab testing is a great way to come up with an individual plan just for you.
The Allergy Buster Injection
At Interactive Health Clinic, our number one goal is to get you results. We’ve created a proprietary blend of vitamins that can help naturally reduce your allergy symptoms, all in one single injection called our Allergy Buster. It contains vitamins like Thiamine (B1), Pantothenic Acid (B5) and Vitamin C to help naturally lower histamine levels.
To learn more about our Interactive Health approach to personalized medicine, please give us a call at 425-361-7945
