Research finds link between food allergies and gut health

New research has found gut health could be linked to our ability to fight food allergies.

University of New South Wales associate professor Alice Lee said research showed patients with food allergies had less diverse communities of gut microbiomes, and this made them more susceptible to developing food allergies and fighting them later in life.

"The healthy gut will have lots and lots of different microorganisms, that diversity is very important," she said.

According to associate professor Lee, people are beginning to treat their allergies with immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy is a way of people building up a resistance to substances they are allergic to with desensitisation.

This process greatly increases the amount of allergy inducing foods they can consume.

For example, after immunotherapy a patient might not be able to eat an entire bag of peanuts, but it's likely they won't be hospitalised if traces end up in their food.

This practice is starting to take off in popularity, especially overseas, and associate professor Lee said the practice is successful in about 70 per cent of patients.

"It (immunotherapy) is important because allergies are one of those things, where if you avoid your allergy you're fine, but if you're exposed to it unknowingly ... it can kill a person," she said.

But for immunotherapy to be successful, associate professor Lee said it was important for patients to first develop healthy gut microbiomes.

NICM Health Research Institute's Dr Deep Jyoti Bhuyan said improving gut health would help the body in a number of ways including our digestion, immune system and even mood.

Dr Bhuyan said almost every disease was linked to gut health in some way.

"Although the research is still in its early stages, the indications are, if you take care of your gut microbiome by eating healthy, by exercising daily and sleeping well, then you would be able to avoid a lot of diseases, including diabetes, obesity, and cancer even," he said.

To take care of your gut, Dr Bhuyan advised people to eat a varied diet and most importantly include more dietary fibre.

To maintain a healthy gut we needed a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, grains and nuts.

Importantly, people should avoid going on restrictive diets that limit carbohydrates.

"For the gut microbiome to sustain and flourish, you need soluble fibre in your diet, and the best way to get it is to eat a lot of complex carbs," he said.

For an added boost to your gut, Dr Bhuyana said eating fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi were ideal as they provided both prebiotics and probiotics at the same time.

Dr Bhuyana said it was also vital not to rely on supplements to provide nutrients.

"I'm not a big fan of over-the-counter supplements .... rather, you can actually try to get those from sources like natural foods and eat a lot of fibre," he said.

Associate professor Lee said there were a number of ways to prevent food allergies before they took hold.

Because a lot of allergies are developed during early childhood, she said it was important to focus on ways to reduce risk both during and after pregnancy.

In the past, women were advised to avoid allergens while pregnant, but she said that was the wrong advice.

Instead, people should be developing their immune systems by exposing themselves to as many allergens as possible, she said.

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Associate professor Lee said it was crucial this continued through the first year of a baby's life, and there were a few ways parents could expose their children to these allergens.

The first was by including allergens in infants' foods during the weaning process, and the second was with breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding exposed babies to their mother's microbiomes through breast milk, as well as introducing them to any allergens a mother may have consumed, she said.