The Benefits of Probiotics for Allergies – Invite Health Podcast, Episode 124
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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What is the microbiome?
The microbiome are the different microbes that live inside of you and on you. For instance, there is bacteria in your lungs, in your digestive tract, in women’s vaginal tissue, in your mouth and on your scalp. The number of bacteria both inside of us and on us slightly outnumbers the number of human cells we have. There are trillions and trillions of bacteria. Along with bacteria, there are also viruses, yeast bacteria and archaea bacteria.
This bacteria can fall into two categories – good bacteria (which promotes health) and bad bacteria. Generally, the good bacteria outnumbers the bad and sort of have this crowd control function, where they keep the bad bacteria in line. But sometimes there are opportunistic situations, where something happens to your immune system and kills off your good bacteria. This is when the bad bacteria grows in number and wreaks havoc.
How to Make Sure You Have Adequate Levels of Good Bacteria
Having adequate levels of good bacteria is extremely beneficial. There are three ways to ensure this.
- A great diet. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, beans and other legumes. Avoid alcohol and smoking. Be aware of the cleaning fluids and chemicals you are using. Avoid too much sugar and too much salt. Many prescription drugs kill off good bacteria.
- Fermented foods. These include kefir and yogurt.
- A high-quality probiotic supplement. A high-quality probiotic supplement is based on science and research.
Clinical Studies
There are studies that have focused on children and wheat allergies. When the children were given certain strains of Probiotics over a three month period, the reaction to the wheat would go away. When they stopped giving the children the Probiotic, after the three months the reaction would start to come back again.
Separate studies I found focused on children who had peanut allergies. Now, a peanut allergy is a really dangerous allergy. This can cause something called an anaphylactic reaction, where they cannot breathe. In these studies, English and Australian doctors were giving children desensitization drops along with Probiotics and found it was helpful in getting their peanut allergies under control. Now, this does not mean that these children were able to eat peanuts everyday, but if they ate one by accident these studies were showing that it would not be as life threatening.
Pollen allergies in the spring include tree pollen, like poplar trees. Pollen allergies in the summer are usually grass pollen, then after that it is ragweed. There are even studies that show evidence that certain strains of Probiotics help with food allergies and pollen allergies.
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