Allergies Go Away

Yesterday I sent a text message to a friend.  I hadn’t seen her in a while and just wanted to check in.  She replied that she and her two young sons weren’t feeling so well.  The culprit?  It was allergies.  As I was reading my friend’s messages, my son’s sensei at the karate school came over to say, “Thank you for the eggs!”  He is currently celebrating 40 years of his black belt status.  That’s quite an achievement so I thought I’d give him some local, pasture raised eggs from happy chickens since I remembered that he eats about 30 eggs a week.  He then started to tell me that since my family and I have been coming to his karate school he’s been suffering from allergies.  Allergies, allergies, and more allergies.  It’s that time of the year.

In the past few years I’ve worked with people whose allergies have pretty much disappeared.  A relative that I health coached had really bad allergies.  She was taking Flonase ever single day. We worked with food and eventually she went from taking the Flonase every single day to once a month to once in a while to none at all. This was just working with food.  Today she doesn’t use Flonase and her blood pressure is almost in normal range that she doesn’t need to take her high blood pressure medication all the time.  She’s even lost a little weight.  A friend had bad allergies last summer.  I made her an allergy herbal tea and in a matter of a few days she was better. Another relative told me that she’s allergic to cats.  I sent her the same allergy herbal tea. After a few months she noticed that she could tolerate being near her cats.  She stopped taking her allergy medicine and consistently drank the allergy herbal tea.  I told my son’s sensei that I’ll be giving him some allergy herbal tea the next time I see him.  

Food is medicine.  it’s pure and it’s gentle.  When you start to understand the medicinal benefits of food and incorporate real food into your diet, your world changes for the better.  It’s so simple.  Just start with food - organic, local, and seasonal.

Do you suffer from seasonal, environmental or food allergies?  How badly do you want them to go away?

Spring, Sneezing, And Allergies

I’ve always loved spring.  To me I’ve always associated it with hope, love, and beauty.  I love the new flowers that start to pop up and the green blades of grass. When I start to see dandelions I know that spring has arrived.

In my elementary school years I was pretty healthy.  I hardly ever got sick or missed school.  My brother on the other hand suffered from asthma and allergies.  My dad used to joke that he was allergic to everything except girls.  

When I worked in the corporate world I noticed that I was getting sick all the time so I scheduled doctor appointments frequently.  I remember going every week for about a month.  Each time I visited the doctor he’d give me some Claritin.  I eventually figured out that the Claritin did nothing for me and that it was the stress from work and my poor diet that was causing my allergies.  When I left the corporate world and fixed my diet my allergies went away.

When someone suffers from allergies it’s a gut issue or an autoimmune condition. I’ve seen it and studied it many times.  Whether it’s environmental or food allergies anyone can heal them.  I’ve been advocating the solution for some time now.  Eat organic, local, and seasonal.

Not everyone understands the concept of eating local and seasonal.  It’s pretty simple.  If something doesn’t grow in your area don’t eat it or don’t eat it all the time. People don’t understand this idea because we have access to foods from all over the world in grocery stores.  I live in New York but bananas don’t grow here.  I rarely eat bananas because they're not part of my environment and they won’t strengthen my microbiome.   

This is why I’m big into CSAs and I believe this is the reason why my immune system over the last three years has improved immensely.  Before I moved to New York my gut health was not its best.  I had just gone through a few traumatic years of health problems.  I was so weak and so vitamin deficient I thought that I was dying.  

People don’t have to suffer.  People don’t have to accept a sick body.  Get with a certified health coach or wellness practitioner.  Run past the fear and trust the process because this process that I and many others teach really does work.

The Consequence Of Autoimmune Disease

Autoimmune disease is the consequence of bad nutritional science.

Last month I started health coaching a lady who wanted help with severe environmental allergies. Not only had she been suffering from allergies for a while she was overweight and had a family history of heart disease and diabetes. She was worried about her A1C levels signaling a high sugar diet and perhaps diabetes in the horizon as her health history suggested. I asked her what her diet looked like. She told me she didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. If she had anything it was a cup of coffee. For snacks she ate candy. And for dinner she ate very little, maybe rice and a little protein. She paused for a moment and then stated that she didn’t cook at all. She said that a lady would come to cook for her husband on the weekends. I asked her what I would find in her refrigerator if I were to come over to her house. She said that there might be some beans and maybe some fruit.

This is the SAD diet, the standard American diet. Not only is it sad in a literal sense, this is people’s reality on a daily basis. There should be joy in partaking delicious, nutritious food rather than people rushing to grab fast food or standing up to eat their meals. For many people home cooked meals is a thing of the past. I felt so bad for this woman and her family. She confided that she had anxiety issues and she was worried about two of her three children. One was living an adventurous, careless lifestyle while her daughter was suffering from mental issues and depression. This is what happens when people are not taught proper nutrition, self care, and self love. Everyone suffers. If we eat poorly then this is the legacy that we pass on to our children and future generations.

The good news is it’s never too late to reverse disease and bad eating and lifestyle habits. It doesn’t matter if someone has stage 4 cancer or was told by the doctors that they have little time to live. No, it’s not a magical, overnight shift that takes place. It takes work, real hard word, patience, and trust in the process. If you’re sick of being sick there is a better way.