The home remedies for food allergies include elimination diets, increasing stomach acid, activated charcoal, bioflavonoids, vitamin C, pantothenic acid, flaxseed oil, and bananas. Other remedies include fresh fruit juices, castor oil, vitamin E, acupuncture, yoga, and limes. Behavioral and lifestyle changes also help boost your defenses against allergens. Food allergies are a widespread medical condition where your immune system identifies a component of your food, usually proteins, as harmful. It is not the same as food intolerance or other reactions that occur due to medications and toxins. While there is no cure, some of the more aggressive treatment programs can dramatically improve the condition, but there are also side effects. For that reason, many people choose to take a more natural approach to treating food allergies. These home remedies can help not only to treat the symptoms of food allergies when they do occur, but they also can prevent the allergic reactions from occurring in the first place. [1]
Home Remedies for Food Allergies
While you should consult a doctor in the case of severe food allergies, many of the home remedies for food allergies can be effective and easy to use for millions of people. Let us look at some of them in detail below: [2]
Elimination Diets
The best method of treating food allergies is to avoid consuming the allergenic food altogether. There are a number of elimination diets that can work, but it is important not to make mistakes, especially if you aren’t sure what is causing you to have a negative reaction. [3]
- Record what you eat for 2-4 weeks, detailing every meal, along with recording any reactions that you might experience along the way.
- Then, slowly begin removing certain foods (one at a time) from your diet for 1-2 weeks at a time and monitor any change in reactions by your body.
- At that point, if you do suspect that removing a food from your diet caused the improvement, then you should double check your suspicion and add it to your diet (two times per day).
- Once the symptoms come back, then you can safely confirm that these are your trigger foods.
Do this repeatedly until you have identified all of your potential food allergies.
Food allergy affects 4 to 6 percent of children and 4 percent of adults. Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Increase Stomach Acid
The reason that “foreign” proteins make their way into the body and subsequently cause the immune response is that there isn’t enough acid in the stomach to properly break down the food. A lack of something like hydrochloric acid can compromise the digestive capabilities of the body. Therefore, increasing the amount of acid you have in your stomach is essential to eliminating food allergies. Betaine hydrochloride is an easy to find supplement at many health food stores that can be taken before and after meals to increase and maintain a healthy level of acid in the stomach. [4]
Bananas
Bananas are very good at relieving the symptoms of allergic reactions to food. Bananas reduce skin rashes and stomach discomfort and help to regulate the body’s metabolism. Therefore, eating enough bananas doesn’t cure food allergies, but it does reduce the severity or likelihood of allergic reactions being too serious.
Activated Charcoal
Use of activated charcoal helps to counter the effects of allergic reactions by breaking down the proteins and helping them move unnoticed through the digestive system. It can be mixed with water or a sweetened juice solution can be used to regulate the digestive system. You will need a decent amount, about 60 grams, for it to be effective. [5]
Vitamin C
Vitamin C is often linked to improving the health of the immune system which may get affected by an allergic reaction. However, that being said, make sure that you aren’t allergic to any of the fruits and vegetables you are boosting your system with, as that can be counterproductive to the entire process. [6]
Castor Oil
Castor oil coats your stomach and reduces severe effects of an allergic reaction to the food you eat. Drink a small amount of castor oil (a cup of water with 5-10 drops of castor oil) every morning on an empty stomach. [7]
Vitamin E-rich Foods
Vitamin E is known to be very anti-allergenic and it can boost your body‘s immune system strength, so it doesn’t falsely recognize acceptable proteins as dangerous “foreign” substances. Some foods that are rich in vitamin E include tofu, spinach, almonds, sunflower seeds, avocados, shrimp, rainbow trout, olive oil, and broccoli. [8]
Flaxseed Oil and Pantothenic Acid
Flaxseed oil is very effective at boosting the anti-allergenic behavior of the body. It affects the immune system and improves the tolerance of the body’s systems to a wide variety of proteins and food items. Pantothenic acid is another very important elements in anti-allergenic activity, but it is also known by another name, vitamin B5. Some of the best foods for vitamin B5 include mushrooms, oily fish (trout), cheese, eggs, avocados, beef, veal, pork, chicken, and sweet potatoes. [9]
Limes
Lime juice, when added to water with some honey, can work as a powerful detoxifying substance in the body. If you drink this mixture for a few weeks, it can flush the toxins from your system. These are the sorts of toxins that can confuse your body’s immune system and cause these issues with your protein digestion. [10]
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a very good way to restore the natural balance of the body, as well as the metabolic functions and immune system responses. The best part of using acupuncture is that there are no side effects, and you will be able to help dozens of other potential medical conditions as well. Using a trained acupuncturist, particularly one who is specifically knowledgeable about food allergies, is always recommended for the best results. [11]
Yoga
Various asanas from yoga have been directly linked to reducing allergic reactions in the body, and the particular sensitivity of overly delicate stomachs. As with acupuncture, using a trained yoga instructor is often a better choice than trying to do them on your own, at least at first. [12]
Carrot Juice and Cucumber Juice
This mixture is a very effective treatment for food allergies, especially during a breakout. Anti-allergenic components in both of these vegetable juices make them a smart choice for your food allergy issues. While these home remedies can help with your problems, food allergies can be extremely severe, and even fatal. You should speak with an allergist so you can get all of the information about your condition. Depending on the severity of the allergy, avoiding the food altogether is probably the wisest choice. As always, prevention is better than treatment. [13]
