Which Allergy Supplements are the Best?
Allergy and anti-histamines go together like cheese and pickle in most discussions of allergy symptoms and remedies. Often we are so bound up in the discussion of which anti-histamine to use we fail to notice other supplements we could use.
And I’m not, for once, harping on about how superb Vitamin C is in the correct doses, at reducing histamine in the bloodstream. Today we look beyond Vitamin therapy to a much less well known branch of Nutritional and Naturopathic Therapy, namely Amino Acid Treatment.
And to get the best out of this post make sure you’ve read the Allergies, Immunology and…Digestion post.
Amino Acids Supplements 101
Amino acids are the tiny building blocks that fit together and make the proteins that make up our muscles, skin, hair and bones as well as our digestive enzymes and some of our hormones.
Simply put some amino acids are used by Nutrition experts to help Allergy patients and here is a brief overview. We’re going to keep this practical so we’ll go straight for simple uses of the principal aminos.
We have to start somewhere and we’re starting at the place where you have a diagnosis of “Leaky Gut” from a laboratory test or from a good discussion with a nutritionally aware health expert.
With a leaky gut half digested proteins and other large semi digested food fragments will be seeping into the bloodstream and will be swept along to the liver where the problem has to be dealt with.
So let’s go back to the stomach where the digestive process begins. Not much digestion happens there, mind you, but the food gets covered with acid and mixed so that digestive acid – hydrochloric acid – are thoroughly mixed into the food. This not only starts the process off but when the food enters the small intestine the acid triggers digestive enzymes there to really start the serious business of digestion.
Not having enough acid in the stomach means the digestion in the small intestine is hindered.
How the stomach loses it’s normal ability to produce digestive acid is another question and we can’t really go into that here, but amino acid therapy starts with aminos to help the stomach do it’s job properly. Many cases of so called indigestion are due to little or no acid present in the stomach to kick start digestion. Ironically these symptoms are often misdiagnosed as too much acid in the stomach and lead to treatment with acid suppressing medication.
Histidine is an amino acid with many functions and one of them is to help the secretion of acid in the stomach.
It also has a role in the immune system – acting as a kind of control or thermostat to regulate how vigorous the inflammatory response will be,
The dose has to be worked out alongside all other medication you may be on, so this takes some care.
Glutamine is an amino with lots of application to the digestive system. Much used by nutritional therapists to help heal leaky gut it has a central role in the nutritional approach to healing allergies.
These 2 aminos taken alongside other crucial nutrients such as vitamin C can help with a range of allergies. Doses have to be sorted out with some expert input that takes your lifestyle and medication into account.
