According to Chinese medicine, the diagnosis for allergies is an external invasion with underlying spleen/wei deficiency and liver stagnation and/or heat. It’s a mouthful I know 😀 Here’s what it means for you…
I’ll start with the root cause and work our way outward. The liver becomes overburdened from emotions and toxicity. At this moment in time, just about everyone on planet earth has an overburdened liver because we are very stressed and we live in a very toxic environment. Even if you think you live super cleanly, you’re still getting exposed to mega amounts of toxicity. Think scents, perfumes, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, lawn care, textiles, lotions, soaps, household cleaners, and so much more.
An overburdened liver will intrude on the spleen (aka the digestion) and eventually the spleen qi will weaken. Wei qi can be thought of as the immune system, and even 2000 years ago it was understood that the digestion and the immune system were very closely related. So a weakened spleen qi also means the wei qi has decreased.
Now here’s where it all comes together. A diet that consists of too much junk and heavy foods will cause the liver to stagnate, the digestion can’t properly process it, the body will be forced to turn it into phlegm, the phlegm will travel to the orifices such as the nose, hoping to be expelled. The phlegm will keep building up if the diet is consistently poor. An external factor such as bacteria, viruses, pollution, or pollen will enter the nasal cavity and find a comfy home in all that phlegm and fester and multiply.
We call it allergies, but what it actually is is a sinus infection. You may have noticed that a head cold in the winter feels a lot like allergies in the summer? That’s because they are in fact the same thing.
The key to staying healthy is cleaning up any toxicity you are exposing yourself to, especially the diet, and scents. But even the healthiest eaters get allergies… why? Because the biggest phlegm producers are actually eggs, dairy, and gluten. Those big breakfasts consisting of eggs and protein that all the holistic health coaches recommend are actually making you feel worse. Start your morning with lemon water and fruit, and throughout the day try to stick to real foods as much as you can.
