The gut microbiome affects your overall health. Seasonal allergies affect 30% of adults. Gut health is connected to seasonal allergies and their severity.
If sneezing, sniffling, and watery eyes sounds like the norm when pollen levels rise, you may want to start improving your gut health. 
How does gut health affect seasonal allergies?
Normally, you’d think your nose, eyes, mouth, and skin are the main places to focus when seasonal allergies hit. These are the areas that seem to flare up and react the most, so that makes sense.
However, your gut has a major role in your immune system and how it responds to allergens. If your gut balance is healthy, it fights them off with no problems. If your gut is unbalanced in any way, it can cause your immune system to overreact resulting in seasonal allergy symptoms.
The balance within your gut isn’t the only way gut health affects your immune response. Leaky gut, technically referred to as intestinal permeability, is a phenomenon in which your intestinal lining isn’t as strong as it should be. The weakened junctions allow for bacteria to pass through when they shouldn’t be able to. This alerts your immune system that an invader is already on the inside.
When the immune system reacts, cells rush to the problem area and cause inflammation wherever the bacteria are found. This can lead to damage to tissues in that area, and if this happens consistently over time, it can lead to disease or autoimmune problems.
In the case of seasonal allergies and a leaky gut, they’re adding fuel to the fire. Your immune system has already been working overtime and gets exposed to allergens, so it has a lower ability to react to them. It now reacts excessively to something that normally wouldn’t be an issue.
Think of it like a mom who has been working all day, comes home to a giant mess in the house, 3 kids are yelling for her, and hubby is asking, “What’s for dinner?” On their own, each of these things is easy to deal with. However, when it’s a storm of chaos all at once, Mom sometimes overreacts with frustration because of overload.
The same thing is happening with the immune response. It’s already been overworked, and now you’re adding something else that should be relatively easy to deal with. Instead, it’s just one more stress that feels like too much to handle.
So, how can you help your body to stop overreacting each time pollen hits? Fix your gut.
Foods that Improve Gut Health
Before we dive into specific foods, let’s talk about food in general. When you were a kid in school, they probably talked about “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods.
Think about your diet.
How many of those unhealthy foods are you eating on a daily basis? Now, how many of the healthy foods are you eating on a daily basis?
While the food pyramid is a decent place to start, it does suggest eating way more grains (even some less healthy ones make their way onto that block) than we really should.
Your main focus when eating should be getting healthy fats, high-quality protein, fruits, and vegetables. These healthier food options feed your gut bacteria all the things they need to stay healthy, including:
- Polyphenols
- Prebiotics
- Fiber
- Protein
- Antioxidants
- Fats
If you’re focusing on eating carbs because they keep you full longer, you’re likely getting way more sugars and processed ingredients than you realize. High quantities of sugar, sodium, and highly processed ingredients feed the opportunistic bacteria. When they start getting more of the foods they like than your helpful bacteria do, they start to overpopulate the gut microbiome.
Healthy bacteria give off helpful molecules like short-chain fatty acids, unlock polyphenols from our foods, and send out antioxidants to help keep our systems running smoothly.
Opportunistic, or unhealthy, bacteria send out inflammatory molecules that cause damage to your gut lining (setting off leaky gut issues).
So here are the foods you’ll want to focus on getting.
Probiotic-rich foods can help add more healthy strains to your gut. Some of the best probiotics for seasonal allergies include Lactobacillus casei Shirota, Lactobacillus paracasei ST11, Lactobacillus gasseri, Bifidobacterium longum, and Bacillus clausii.
- Kefir
- Kombucha
- Sauerkraut
- Yogurt (make sure it doesn’t have extra sugar and actually contains probiotic strains, it will name them specifically like Lactobacillus)
- Kimchi
- Miso
Prebiotic-rich foods feed your healthy gut bacteria. Prebiotics are hard-to-digest fibers that your gut bacteria need to ferment for them to be used by your body. This is the last step in your digestive process before food is pushed out as waste. For people who cannot eat probiotics, prebiotics are going to be the way to go. They allow the good bacteria to multiply so you have more beneficial species in your gut. Some great prebiotic-rich foods include:
- Asparagus
- Sugar beet
- Garlic
- Chicory
- Onion
- Jerusalem artichoke
- Wheat
- Barley
- Rye
- Honey (local, raw honey can have pollen and other great derivatives from the bees to help your body recognize the allergens so it doesn’t overreact to them as easily)
- Banana
- Tomato
- Soybean
- Milk
- Peas
- Beans
Foods that are high in prebiotics are also high in polyphenols, antioxidants, and fiber! So you get a lot of great benefits from eating a diet rich in fruits, veggies, and other plant-based foods.
Other Ways to Improve Gut Health
While diet has a major impact on your gut health and therefore your reaction to seasonal allergens, there are other ways to support your gut health during seasonal changes.
- Take Atrantil. Atrantil is a product that was created to improve the state of your gut microbiome. It feeds the good bacteria, starves and shuts down the bad microorganisms, and calms inflammation so the gut can heal. You now have the option of getting Atrantil or AtrantilPro, which contains prebiotics and probiotics!
- Get enough good-quality sleep. Sleep helps your body to digest and repair itself more easily. When you’re lacking good quality sleep, your body is unable to work at its best. So whatever you need to do, get on a good sleep routine.
- Manage stress so it doesn’t weaken your body. Stress increases cortisol and inflammation throughout the body. This weakens the immune system further. So, find a way to manage stress levels and make sure self-care is a major part of your daily lifestyle.
- Do light to moderate exercise daily (unless you’re used to more extreme workouts). Exercise helps your body manage stress, cravings, and inflammation. Exercising can help improve your gut health and the immune system.
- Only use medications that are needed (especially antibiotics). Overuse of antibiotics and other medications can add more waste for your body to manage. Antibiotics can kill off your helpful bacterial strains. The best thing to do is to limit medication and antibiotic use to what is needed and try to manage everything else with holistic, functional medicine.
So now you know, your seasonal allergies can be improved by a gut reset! Work with a functional doctor to get your gut microbiome checked so you can get a better plan in place sooner for better results.
