Fuel your life with the purest vitamins
Nov 3rd 2025
Allergies and the Gut
. . . probiotics prevent and treat allergies
Has it seemed to you that more and more people you know have allergies? There’s been a dramatic rise in the incidence of allergies in the industrialized world over the past half century, with no end in sight.
Scientists have two main hypotheses for why this is happening. The “hygiene hypothesis” argues that our overly hygienic environment doesn’t present enough challenges to allow the immune system to develop properly. Children who grow up on farms and get their fair share of dirt under their fingernails have fewer allergies than their urban counterparts.
The second hypothesis, the “microbiota hypothesis,” pertains to gut ecology—the composition of bacteria, yeasts, and parasites, together called microbiota or microflora, in our small and large intestines. It proposes that significant changes to gut ecology that have been observed in industrialized areas of the world have compromised immune competence leading to more allergies.
The healthy gut contains about 3-1/2 pounds of microflora. There are many times more of 
these little bugs in our tummies than there are human cells in our bodies, and many of them play crucial roles in immunity and general health. They help us digest food; they produce certain nutrients, including many B vitamins and vitamin K; they degrade and digest toxins; and they communicate in various ways with the immune system, 2/3 of which resides in the intestines, regulating and balancing it.
But not all of our tummy bugs are good guys. Normally helpful bugs (called probiotics) co-exist with both pathogenic and neutral bugs. In a healthy gut, however, probiotics are clearly in control of the territory. They keep pathogens in check by competing for space and by secreting chemicals that make the intestines inhospitable to them. Probiotics researcher Khem Shahani, PhD, has noted that acidophilin, one of many antimicrobial substances secreted by probiotics, “packs more killing power than penicillin, streptomycin or terramycin.”
However, many factors in industrialized society favor the growth of bad bugs and the decline of the good, probiotic bugs. Primarily the use of broad spectrum antibiotics, but also antacids, birth control pills, steroids, NSAIDS, laxatives, chlorine, stress, and a diet lacking cultured/fermented foods and high in refined carbohydrates and meat contribute to the changes in gut ecology referred to by the proponents of the “microbiota hypothesis.”
As pathogens seize control of the territory, they secrete their own chemicals that are toxic to the probiotics, and to us. The chemicals are also harmful to the intestinal lining, which becomes degraded. Pathogens like candida even grow roots into the intestinal walls, creating further damage. This “leaky gut” allows undigested particles of food into the bloodstream, where they are perceived as allergens, and the immune system reacts to them accordingly. Not only that, but immune cells remember reacting to undigested particles of corn, for example, and then react to all corn as an allergen.
I’ve helped a lot of people to overcome allergies by building their immunity, including restoring probiotic dominance in the intestines. Not only do probiotics restore intestinal wall integrity, they also have an anti-inflammatory and even anti-allergy effect on the immune system. They modulate the immune system so that it responds in a healthy way and doesn’t over-react.
As I’ve described in detail in “The Shocking Truth About Allergies,” allergic reactions are, if you’ll pardon the pun, nothing to sneeze it. They are serious assaults on our bodies that age and sicken us. Why have them? Avoid those allergens that you can and get on a good diet with 4-6 capsules of our Probiotic Formula daily (2-3 for maintenance). Our formula is distinguished from others by its healthy and hardy probiotic strains (in many probiotic products, the good bugs are weak or even dead and dying). In fact, studies have shown 85% of the probiotics on the market to be biologically useless. The strains we use at Beyond Health have the ability to survive their trip through the acidic environment of the stomach and flourish in the intestines. Each of the ten probiotic strains included has a proven track record of success, and together they offer a synergistic system for revitalizing your probiotic population that is without equal. For optimal results, add our Dietary Fiber Formula (the fiber feeds the good bugs) and glutamine, an amino acid that helps rebuild the intestinal lining.