For anyone who deals with seasonal allergies, you know just how frustrating certain times of the year can be. When pollen becomes invasive and dust wages war on your nostrils, the irritation can feel downright unbearable. While suffering from seasonal allergies is common–especially for women–it doesn’t make it any easier to manage.
Let’s take a deeper dive into why seasonal allergies happen, the connection between hormonal health and allergy symptoms, and how to prepare your body for properly fending off allergens.
What are Seasonal Allergies?
Also known as hay fever, seasonal allergies happen when your immune system essentially “overreacts” to outdoor irritants that are ultimately harmless and mistakenly identifies them as threats. As a result, your body releases histamine, a chemical that triggers sneezing, congestion, itchy eyes, fatigue, and even brain fog.1 The substances that elicit this reaction depend on the season, though some common allergens are:
- Spring: Tree pollen
- Spring/Summer: Grass pollen
- Fall: Weed pollen
- Summer: Mold spores
Allergies and Hormones
Did you know that women who suffer from severe PMS, migraines, or heavy cycles often report heightened seasonal allergy symptoms?2 There’s a reason for this, and it goes back to how your hormones and allergies interact.
The higher your estrogen is, the more histamine you release, as estrogen directly stimulates mast cells, the very immune cells that signal histamine output. This means that during times of elevated estrogen, including ovulation, pregnancy, and perimenopausal fluctuations, you may notice allergy symptoms feel worse.3
Cortisol, your body’s stress hormone, plays another key role here, too. When cortisol is balanced, it helps regulate immune responses and prevents the excessive inflammation that can make allergies worse. However, when you’re chronically stressed, cortisol spikes and the immune system becomes more reactive, leading to your allergy symptoms to intensify.4 This is exactly why allergy flares often coincide with stints of poor sleep, emotional stress, and burn out.
Therefore, when estrogen is high and cortisol is dysregulated, histamine rises, which inevitably intensifies your symptoms. Histamine and fluctuating hormones meeting in the middle is a disaster recipe for afternoon crashes and dizzying mood dips. For this reason, keeping your hormones balanced can actually play a pretty helpful role in getting your allergies under control.
How to Deal with Seasonal Allergies
It’s important to remember that when it comes to seasonal allergies, the pollen itself isn’t the issue, though it’s easy to put the blame on it. The true culprit is your immune system’s exaggerated response to pollen, which is why making sure you have a fortified immune system is the key to conquering seasonal allergies. This is your protection shield against letting ultimately harmless triggers send your body into a spiral.
So how do you boost the immune system? Supplements like FLO Endocrine Superfood can provide your body with the necessary nutrients to strengthen your immune defense and stabilize cortisol fluctuations. Maintaining a balanced diet with protein, healthy fats, and fiber is crucial as well. Additionally, magnesium and quercetin are supplements that also act as natural mast cell stabilizers, helping reduce histamine release.5
But more importantly, what many don’t know is that probiotics play a pretty fundamental role in having a strong immune system. 70 percent of the body’s immune cells are located in the gut itself, which is why it’s important to make sure that there’s enough good bacteria flowing. When your gut microbiome is balanced, the immune system is less reactive, which lowers your inflammation and histamine response.6
URO Whole Body Probiotic contains clinically-studied doses of probiotic strains like immune-boosting allstars L. plantarum and Bacillus coagulans, equipping you with the defense necessary to conquer allergy season and so much more. Probiotics often work best when started before allergy season, equipping your body so that you can actually have a fighting chance.*
Lastly, since cortisol and immune reactivity are directly linked, keeping your nervous system calm can play a major role in reducing flare intensity. Start your early mornings with some sunlight exposure, gentle movement, breathwork, and prioritizing a full night of sleep, and you’ll surely notice a difference.
Allergy season does not need to knock you down completely. In order to truly support your body, maintain focus on gut health, stress regulation, blood sugar stability, and hormone balance—your allergies won’t stand a chance.
As always, be sure to check in with your trusted provider if you have questions or concerns about your health.
A note on sex and gender: Sex and gender exist on spectrums, and this article uses terms like “male” or “female” to refer to sex assigned at birth. Learn more.
