Isn’t it a shame when the summer finally arrives and then we’re all full of hay fever? How boring. And actually, isn’t it just unbelievably unpleasant.
I have suffered with hay fever for years and years, yet, when I changed my diet a couple of years ago, my hay fever stopped.
Most of you know how fascinating I find nutrition, and hay fever is a topic which really highlights how nutrition truly affects absolutely everything. At first glance, it doesn’t sound like hay fever is much to do with what you’re eating, but once you look a little deeper, it becomes clear that it could be everything to do with what you’re eating.
Histamine isn’t the one and only way to reduce your hay fever, but it is a good place to start looking.
Most of us know that hay fever symptoms can be reduced with an antihistamine – but did you also know that a lot of food is either high in histamine, or can promote the release of histamine in our bodies?
And so, wouldn’t it make sense to reduce the histamine we are, essentially, eating in order to reduce the overall amount in our systems and therefore reduce or eliminate our hay fever symptoms?
Think of your histamine tolerance as a bath. You can only put so much histamine in before your bath overflows and you start getting allergy symptoms. Everyone has a different size bath. When there isn’t so much environmental histamine, you’re likely to be able to get away with eating more histamine foods, and its perfectly possible for that to change in the hay fever season.
So, how do we reduce our histamine load?
This is where it gets a little depressing. Start by imagining all the nice things you enjoy, and you’re probably not far off.
Seriously though, eliminating your intake of the major histamine foods in your diet could well make a big difference to your hay fever symptoms. Even if you only get rid of them for the hay fever season.
Start by removing everything fermented – yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut and other fermented veg, kombucha, cured meat, cheese, chocolate, alcohol, soy products and sourdough bread.
These are the biggest hitting sources of histamine in your diet – these foods are either high in histamine or promote the release of histamine in your body.
Yes, fermented foods are excellent for gut health. But here, we are talking hay fever. Yes, there could be an argument which says better gut health would lead to less allergy symptoms. But perhaps its best to work on that away from hay fever season, rather than overload your body.
Do you need help working out how best to eat to optimise your health and immune system? We can talk things through and come up with a plan over FaceTime, Skype or Zoom; get in touch and we can make a plan.