If you live in the Bay Area, it’s a pretty safe guess that you know at least several people suffering from allergies. Many patients visit my office looking for a cure after they spent years on medications treating allergy symptoms. Allergic rhinitis, a.k.a. hay fever affects 10-30% of the population worldwide. More than 10% of the US population suffers from at least one autoimmune disease.
Effective Treatments for Allergies
Chinese medicine is extremely effective and efficient at healing seasonal and environmental allergies. The treatment involves a combination of herbs and acupuncture, and usually brings improvements within 1-2 weeks, and typically, lasting results within 3 months. After successfully treating hundreds of patients for various allergies, particularly seasonal allergies, and allergies to dust and animal dander – it has become one of my favorite ailments to treat.
Autoimmune Conditions
Whereas the symptoms of these types of allergies are very unpleasant, only in rare cases do they become life-threatening. This can be very different in another class of immune system-related diseases called autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune 
diseases are rampant in the US. An estimated 50 million Americans suffer from autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases represent the third most common cause of chronic illness in the United States.
Fortunately, the picture of how immune problems can get triggered and treated starts to emerge more clearly. With advances in science, we finally understand what triggers autoimmunity other than genetic predisposition. Very similar mechanisms are responsible for causing systemic inflammation. Interestingly, the scientific findings explaining the triggering of autoimmune diseases, allergies, and chronic inflammatory conditions, very much correlate with how Chinese Medicine has viewed the immune system and related diseases for over 850 years.
In his book Pí Wèi Lùn, the great scholar Li-Dong-Yuan not only describes how the immune system is really “rooted” in the gut and how in the treatment of all immune-related problems the gut needs to be treated first. The Pí Wèi Lùn is also mentioned as probably the first record of Multiple Sclerosis in the medical literature.
Allergy & Autoimmune Solutions
This is essentially why Chinese Medicine (CM) is so good at treating allergies, inflammation, and autoimmune conditions. They have been studying and treating it for over 850 years. From 2005 to 2006, I was fortunate to receive intensive training in treating allergies and autoimmune conditions with CM from the most prolific, contemporary Western scholar of CM, Bob Flaws.
Those suffering from allergies and autoimmune conditions display a set of systemic imbalances that can be effectively addressed with the right treatment. The same systemic imbalances that cause allergies also cause the body to weaken and are essentially responsible for the process of aging. By correcting these factors one can not only heal allergies but can profoundly improve one’s health and well-being.
Because You Can
Healing allergies makes a huge difference in the lives of those suffering. Simple cases, like seasonal allergies or allergies to dust and animal dander, should not go untreated, with simple and quick solutions available. And allergy sufferers should not be locked into infinitely treating symptoms when there is a way to address the cause and bring lasting relief.