Throughout history, herbal remedies and other complementary medicines have been used to treat allergies. This page will be developed to review how modern naturopaths treat allergic reactions and their causes.
Allergies can be caused by a number of different factors and our main advice is to find a naturopathic practitioner and give them detailed information on your lifestyle, diet and allergic reactions. It is also advisable to be tested for allergies as many people are mildly allergic to a number of items and prolonged exposure to these items can decrease immunity to them. Often sufferers
are not aware of many things they are mildly allergic to.
Allergies, lifestyle and diet
Allergy sufferers have increased in number throughout the western world. The modern era puts a huge amount of stress on the body. Many of the things we take for granted in our life did not exist 50 or 100 years ago. Our ancestors did not received x-rays and microwaves from TV sets, mobile phones, microwave cookers and clinical x-ray machines. They did not have cling film and plastic bags. They did not drink
instant coffee and diet cola. They did not drive at 70 miles per hour in busy traffic! And while they did not receive the benefits of modern medicines they were also denied the side effects. The human being evolved in a much simpler era and naturopaths strive to recreate the more beneficial aspects of a simpler lifestyle and diet.
The lifestyle section of this website has many suggestions for diet and lifestyle which can potentially have real benefits for allergy sufferers
There are specific foods that can encourage allergic reactions such as cow's milk products, coffee, pork products, white sugar, yeast products, vitamin B supplements, pickles, acid foods, animal fat and alcohol(especially red wine, port and sherry).
Herbal treatments for allergies
This section will be developed to review herbal treatments for allergies
Elderflower is often used in the treatment of hayfever. To be most effective the treatment should be initiated before the hayfever symptoms start, ie a couple of weeks before the particular pollens that cause a reaction usually become a prolem
Ephedra (Ephedra Sinica) has been described as the Chinese herbal
equivalent of salbutamol.the most widely prescribed drug for treating
acute asthma and other allergic reactions that can close the airways. However as the principal active ingredient, ephedrine, is an amphetamine-like
compound that can powerfully stimulate the nervous system and heart, this product is now banned in America and should only be prescribed by a qualified herbalist
With some mild allergy sufferers it may be sufficient just to boost the immune system and herbs such as echinacea may help. It should be pointed out that echinacea can itself cause minor allergic reactions in a very small proportion of users.
A study in mice shows that a Chinese herbal formula of nine Chinese herbs, called FAHF-2, may help prevent
dangerous reactions to peanuts. Peanut allergies affect as many as 6
percent of young children and are a major cause of anaphylaxis.
C. Qu, K. Srivastava, X.-M. Li, et al. "Induction of tolerance after
establishment of peanut allergy by the food allergy herbal formula-2 is
associated with up-regulation of interferon-γ." Clinical and Experimental Allergy, June 2007.
Other naturopathic treatments and allergies
Acupuncture and homeopathy can both be used to treat allergy sufferers.
treatments look at the whole person and treat holistically, often individual
aspects of the treatment do not stand up to conventional clinical trial using double blind sampling techniques.