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NEED TO KNOW
- Drew Brees was diagnosed with severe food allergies early in his NFL career and struggled with inflammation and recovery
- He is partnering with ARS Pharmaceuticals to promote neffy, a needle-free epinephrine nasal spray for severe allergy attacks
- Brees manages his family’s health, including his son’s celiac disease, with regular testing and a focus on gut health
From Super Bowl champ to health advocate, New Orleans legend Drew Brees knows the importance of preparation, especially when it comes to taking care of your body.
Brees, 47, was diagnosed with several severe food allergies around 2004, near the beginning of his two decades in the NFL.
“I could tell that something was wrong, just the way that I was reacting to certain foods,” the 2026 Hall of Fame-inducted quarterback, who led the New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl championship in 2010, tells PEOPLE.“The way it would make me feel very lethargic, a lot of inflammation, and just feeling like I wasn’t able to be myself. I was having a hard time recovering.”
He found out that he had allergies to peanuts and eggs, and in addition to learning how to address it in his everyday life, he also learned the importance of immediate treatment for people with life-threatening allergies.
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Drew Brees
Credit: ARS Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
To raise awareness around allergies, Brees is partnering with ARS Pharmaceuticals to promote Neffy, a nasal spray that delivers epinephrine to stop severe allergy attacks or life-threatening anaphylaxis. For the reason that it’s simple to administer, even for kids (no needles!) and “designed to be very easy to carry, easy to use, carrying your gym bag, your golf bag or your backpack,” as Brees tells PEOPLE, the partnership was a natural fit for him.
“I think more so anything, it’s just about creating the conversation and awareness” of allergies in the U.S., Brees explained, adding the product “peace of mind” to “know there is a solution.” (According to the CDC, about a quarter of Americans report having at least one allergy, and the NIH reports that more than a third of food-allergic adults have had at least one emergency room visit.)
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Drew Brees
Credit: ARS Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Reflecting on how his allergies impacted his career, Brees says that he didn’t want anything to take his mind off training and recovery if he could help it.
“When you’re a professional athlete, you’re obviously putting your body through a lot, you know? A lot of training, a lot of abuse, even just from the perspective of the brain,” he tells PEOPLE. “You want your body solely focused on recovery, recovering every aspect of your body that’s gonna help you have peak performance, and it’s a race too, for that recovery each and every week.”
“I’ve seen people have allergic reactions and it’s scary,” Brees recalls. “I’ve seen people have seizures in the locker room and I feel like, you play long enough, you get exposed to a lot of stuff, you know? I think all those things just make you realize, man, this could happen at any time and you wanna feel like you can help assist.”
On a personal level, he says, “you want to be in a position where you understand everything you can about your body, about what your body agrees with, and about what you want to avoid. And then you gear your lifestyle and your habits and your routine in and around that.”
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Drew Brees with his family in May 2026
Credit: Drew Brees/Instagram
These days, Brees isn’t just managing his own health. As a father of four (with wife Brittany, he has sons Baylen, Bowen and Callen and daughter Rylen), he’s on high alert for his kids’ own food sensitivities, helping one son navigate a celiac diagnosis and managing other family allergies with the same focus he brought to the gridiron.
“His body does not absorb nutrients the way that it should and so we’ve had to do a lot in regards to cleanse and cleaning out his gut and kind of rebuilding the foundation by which he’s able to consume food and get nutrients and supplementation,” he says of his son with celiac. “And I’ve got two other kids who are dairy-free, gluten-free.’”
The family stays ahead of the game with regular testing, ensuring they aren’t caught off guard by sensitivities. For Brees, it’s all about staying a step ahead: “The more we can be educated about it and prepared for it, the better.”
Ultimately, Brees treats his body like a high-performance machine, and he knows that fighting inflammation is a distraction he simply can’t afford.
“Anything that you put in your body or that you’re exposed to that has a negative effect, your body has to immediately go and fight that as opposed to focusing on getting your body ready to go perform at peak performance,” he says — further emphasizing why he believes it’s important for anyone with allergies to look into whether Neffy is something they should have on hand.
Read the original article on People
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