A Naturopath's Input

I recently began working with a Naturopathic Doctor that came highly recommended to me from a friend. (If you live in Portland, OR and would like his name, just send me an email!) He has not worked with anyone who has had (or at least been diagnosed with) Samter's Triad, but he assures me that he has cured many people with food allergies and intolerances, digestive issues, asthma, and chronic sinus inflammation.

This would be a good time to mention that I suffer from food allergies and intolerances, digestive issues, asthma, and chronic sinus inflammation.

A few years ago I had a blood test done which diagnosed me with allergies to eggs and yeast. I certainly have seen a decrease in acute asthma and allergy attacks since I started avoiding those foods about 2 years ago, but my baseline status is still way too inflamed for my liking. My doctor calls it the drop in the bucket effect: clearly there are things that I'm eating/breathing that I am sensitive too, which act like water drops in a bucket. When I am exposed to enough of these things, the bucket overflows, and I end up with an asthma/allergy attack.

In another simple-to-understand analogy, the Doctor explained how foods end up triggering inflamitory responses in my respitory system:

1) I eat something that I am allergic/sensitive to. This causes inflammation in my gut.
2) Constant inflammation leads to Leaky Gut Syndrome (yuck) or tiny lacerations throughout my digestive tract.
3) Food proteins, which have not had a chance to fully break down, escape out of the lacerations and find their way into the bloodstream.
4) These proteins are not recognized by my body as happy, friendly molecules. My lungs and sinuses, which have a long history of exploding with inflammation. send out the signal to my immune system that there are foreign bodies present. The the immune system does what it does best, which is try to expel these proteins from the body by inflaming everything.

To address these issues, I am working with my doctor to:
1) Heal my digestive tract
2) Calm inflammation
3) Figure out what foods I am allergic to

**BUT**

A blood test will not clearly identify my food allergies, because all the steroids I take (Singulair, Flovent, Albuterol) suppress the immune system too much. So for now we are working on addressing my asthma in alternative ways, which I will write about in another post. I should have my first treatment this Thursday, so I'll keep you posted.