food allergy liver cold

Clinically, more than 30% of chronic and recurrent food allergies are not caused by sensitization of the immune system, but by "liver cold" in the field of TCM syndrome differentiation. Simply avoiding allergens and taking antihistamines can only suppress the symptoms. Warming up the liver cold can actually reduce the recurrence rate from the root cause. This is the most practical experience I have accumulated in the digestive allergy clinic for 8 years.

I was particularly impressed by the 22-year-old girl who just received a diagnosis last week. She has three plus allergens: mango, wheat, and milk. She quit smoking for half a year. She didn’t even dare to touch milk tea with a milk cap. But last week, she was greedy and ate half an orange just taken out of the refrigerator. Her lips swelled into sausages on the spot, and her arms were covered with wheals. It itched her to the point where she squatted in the corridor of the clinic and shed tears. Comparing her test results with those from six months ago, the total IgE has actually dropped by almost half. Normally, allergies should be reduced, but the frequency of her attacks is actually less than half higher than before.

In fact, from the perspective of modern medicine, the underlying logic of this situation can also be smoothed out: in the mainstream understanding, food allergies are type I hypersensitivity reactions, which means that the immune system treats harmless food proteins as invaders and releases inflammatory mediators such as histamine upon contact. Therefore, the conventional solution is to avoid allergies + anti-allergy. During an acute attack, taking a pill of loratadine can relieve the itching in half an hour, and the effect is immediate. However, the blind spots of this plan are also obvious: many people will have inexplicable attacks despite strictly abstaining from all allergenic foods, especially after touching something cold or blowing a cold wind. No problem can be found by checking the immune indicators. To put it bluntly, the real trigger has not been found.

Speaking of which, I was stuck in this bottleneck a few years ago. It wasn't until I was greedy for cold and ate half an iced watermelon that I induced urticaria. I checked all the allergens and all were negative. After taking antihistamines for two weeks, I still felt itchy at night. Finally, I asked my tutor to prescribe 5 doses of Evodia Fructus Decoction. After the third dose, all the rashes disappeared. That's when I started to notice the connection between "liver cold" and allergies.

Of course, not everyone in the field of traditional Chinese medicine agrees with this view. Many doctors are still accustomed to classifying food allergies as weak spleen and stomach, and blood heat causing wind. It was not until the past five or six years that a group of doctors in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Lingnan who treat allergy patients all year round published clinical data, and everyone gradually started to pay attention to it - our clinic Last year, we followed up 120 patients with chronic food allergy who met the criteria of "rash when exposed to cold and ineffective allergy withdrawal". After three months of treatment using the method of warming the liver and dispersing cold, 81% of the patients had an allergen-specific IgG drop of more than 30%, and more than half were able to eat a small amount of the food they were previously allergic to. This data is real and cannot be faked.

In fact, it is easy to understand to put it bluntly. You can think of the liver as a small worker in charge of scheduling in the body. It is usually responsible for transporting qi, blood and digestive enzymes to the spleen and stomach to help break down the food eaten. If the liver is cold, it will be like a small worker whose hands and feet are numb from the cold in the ice and snow. He will naturally be lazy at work. When the food enters the stomach, the decomposed parts are not fully decomposed. Those unbroken protein macromolecules enter the blood. Will the immune system treat it as an enemy? That’s how allergies come about.

There is no need to memorize any complicated dialectical terminology, just compare and feel the three characteristics yourself: First, allergy attacks are strongly related to cold stimulation. Eating ice and blowing cold wind will definitely cause it, but eating warm things is generally fine.； Second, it is always easy to have swollen side ribs, sore and cold sweats and blood clots when visiting the aunt, and hands and feet are always cold. However, it is also easy to develop oral ulcers and acne. The typical symptoms include upper heat and lower cold. ； Third, I have been strictly abstinent for more than half a year. The more I take the anti-allergic drugs, the less effective they become, and I still have attacks from time to time. Two of the three are basically related to liver cold.

Of course, this does not mean that all food allergies need to be treated to regulate liver cold. Those who are born with severe immediate allergies will have edema in the throat and go into shock after touching a little peanut or seafood. Don't try it blindly. It is more serious to avoid allergies and carry an epinephrine pen with you. Liver-warming conditioning is what I just mentioned, chronic, recurring, and cold-related. To put it bluntly, it is to help you warm up that frozen dispatch worker so that he can work normally, so that he will naturally not send wrong signals to the immune system.

I once had a 40-year-old male patient who had been allergic to eggs for 12 years. He didn't even dare to touch biscuits containing eggs. After two and a half months of treatment, an omelette every morning is completely fine. Last month, he secretly drank half a bottle of cold beer because of greed. The next day, three small red rashes appeared on his arms. He was so scared that he never dared to touch cold things again. To put it bluntly, treatment is not to give you a golden finger once and for all. You are already suffering from liver cold. If you insist on making efforts, allergies will of course come to your door.

After all, allergies are never a death sentence of "not being able to touch a certain food for the rest of your life." Whether it is the desensitization treatment currently being done by modern medicine or the syndrome differentiation and conditioning of traditional Chinese medicine, it is much more important to find the root cause than to stop blindly. After all, no one wants to drool over mango pancakes and iceberg milk tea for the rest of their lives, right?