An all-too-common condition that affects millions, allergies comprise a wide array of reactions which manifest themselves on the body’s many surfaces. From allergies that appear on the skin in the form of hives and eczema, to respiratory disorders such as asthma, to food sensitivities in the digestive tract, allergies embody an imbalance of the immune system.
Allergies are uncomfortable at best and dangerous – even fatal – in extreme cases. But like the proverbial “canary in the mine”, they are early indicators of deep-rooted health problems that will usually worsen over time. That’s why it’s so important to diagnose and treat them.
When exposed to a foreign substance, your immune system’s answer is essentially to overreact, which brings about an inflammatory response. Hives, swelling, redness and itching are common skin reactions. The conventional treatment is to prescribe antihistamines, blockers that prevent histamines from attaching to your body’s cells and thereby causing the types of symptoms common to most allergy sufferers. This may temporarily alleviate symptoms, but ultimately this type of approach does not eradicate the problem altogether.
Biological medicine takes a dramatically different approach. We seek to explain the reason for the problem to begin with, and from these types of investigations, figure out precisely how to stop the problem at its root cause. At Paracelsus we aren’t interested in masking symptoms but in finding cures.
Intestinal health is an incredibly important factor driving the severity of allergy symptoms. Nutrition is therefore crucial. An improper diet over time has an enormous impact on the intestinal tract, especially in combination with toxins to which the body may be exposed. The digestive flora, the very foundation of the immune system, become imbalanced over time. And this imbalance can throw all systems of the body off kilter.
Our holistic approach is to first address intestinal health. Providing patients with an intensive nutritional plan and helping them detoxify are instrumental strategies that we use to get patients to where they no longer need to rely on medicines prescribed them by conventional medicine. Our mission when it comes to allergy treatment is to “unblock” the body’s regulatory functions rather than simply suppress the body’s response.
Shifting to a more natural diet and integrating naturopathic remedies take time. We are able to accelerate this process with our therapies at the Clinic. Eventually the allergic reactions normalize until the patient eventually becomes more resistant to the catalyst of a particular symptom. That said, our ultimate goal is to get our patients completely off of the antihistamine drugs on which they had come to depend and cure them of the inflammatory reactions that used to afflict them.