Diet plan for patients with allergic rhinitis

There is no uniform list of taboos that applies to all patients. The core logic of dietary conditioning is to "first accurately detect your own food allergens to avoid trigger risks, then adjust your immune status through a dietary structure that is anti-inflammatory and repairs the respiratory mucosa, and at the same time choose an appropriate dietary regimen based on your own body constitution." Blindly following the taboos may lower immunity and increase the frequency of allergic attacks.

A while ago, I saw a girl who was in her junior year of college. She had suffered from allergic rhinitis for three years. She wrote on Xiaohongshu and said she should avoid mango, milk, and seafood. She hadn’t touched her favorite Japanese food for half a year. As a result, she still got up early in the morning and sneezed more than a dozen times every day after autumn. She had a runny nose and couldn't stop it. When I checked for allergens, I found that she was not allergic to food at all. The allergens were mugwort and dust mites. She had been abstaining from food for half a year. However, due to insufficient protein intake, her immunity had been greatly reduced, and her attacks were more severe than before.

Regarding whether allergic rhinitis should avoid raw and cold food, there have been different views in different fields over the years: in the traditional Chinese medicine system, it is generally believed that allergic rhinitis mostly belongs to the category of "nasal sinusitis". Raw and cold food will deplete the lung yang and aggravate the cold condensation state of the nasal orifice. Therefore, no matter what your body type, it is recommended to avoid drinking and eating ice.； The view of modern evidence-based medicine is that cold food itself will not induce the release of histamine. As long as there is no clear food allergy, drinking ice will not directly lead to rhinitis attacks. I usually tell patients that there is no need to stick to any standard. If you sneeze and have a stuffy nose for a long time after drinking iced milk tea, then don’t touch it. If you drink it and it’s okay, you don’t have to be mentally burdened if you drink a cup occasionally. Your own physical feelings are more accurate than any standard.

The first thing you need to figure out when adjusting your diet is what food you are allergic to. Nowadays, many people just look up food-specific IgG and come up with a list of taboos. In fact, this is not necessary. Clinically, it is generally more accurate to use skin pricks for inhaled allergens. For food allergens, it should be judged based on IgE and the actual reaction after eating. If you are found to be weakly positive for egg IgG, but you usually eat fried eggs and scrambled eggs without any problems, then there is no need to avoid it. On the contrary, if you will get rashes and have a blocked nose after eating even if the allergen is negative, you should try to avoid it. The most exaggerated patient I have ever seen had an IgG test that was weakly positive for wheat. He immediately stopped eating all staple foods except rice. He lost ten pounds in three months. His rhinitis did not get better but he developed chronic gastritis. The gain outweighed the loss.

After eliminating triggers, the focus of dietary adjustment is actually to help the body suppress chronic inflammation. You don’t need to take expensive supplements. Just add more dark-colored fruits and vegetables to your daily meals. For example, the anthocyanins in purple cabbage, blueberries, and mulberries, as well as the Omega-3 in saury, sardines, and flax seeds, can help reduce the inflammatory response of the respiratory mucosa. There was a patient who was a programmer who stayed up late all the time and suffered from rhinitis. I asked him to eat steamed saury three times a week, not drink milk tea when he was hungry in the afternoon, and grab a handful of blueberries as a snack. More than three months later, he said that the attack occurred when the seasons changed, and he could even take half a pill less loratadine, and the effect was much more effective than the rhinitis health supplement he bought worth thousands of yuan before.

Many people who have rhinitis think about taking vitamin C to improve their immunity, or even drink two or three effervescent tablets a day. In fact, it is really unnecessary. Excessive vitamin C can cause acid reflux, which will instead irritate the mucous membrane of the nasopharynx and aggravate the symptoms of nasal congestion and foreign body sensation in the throat. There are also popular dietary remedies such as boiled eggs with magnolia flowers and steamed pig noses without eating grass, but they are not suitable for everyone: if you usually have a runny nose and cold hands and feet when the cold wind blows, you are of the wind-cold type. Eating boiled eggs with magnolia flowers can indeed relieve nasal congestion.

If you are pregnant with allergic rhinitis, you should not take medication casually, and you should have a more stable diet. Don't blindly eat large tonic materials such as ginseng and astragalus, which may easily induce immune disorders. Eat more warm foods such as yam, tremella, and lotus seeds to help repair the mucosa. There are also patients with lactose intolerance who experience diarrhea and blocked noses after drinking milk. Even if the allergen test is negative, it is recommended to switch to low-lactose milk or plant milk. Now academic circles have confirmed the correlation between the gut-lung axis. When intestinal permeability increases, allergic reactions will also aggravate.

To put it bluntly, diet management for allergic rhinitis is really not a complicated matter, and there is no need to become an ascetic and dare not eat anything. Last week, a patient came for a review. He had been told that seafood was a taboo for two years, but later he found out that he was only allergic to ragweed. He secretly ate a meal of hairy crabs last week, and nothing happened. He was very happy. To put it bluntly, your body is the best ruler. Finding your own rhythm is more effective than any unified recipe.