When hay fever season rolls around, many allergy sufferers first think of making an appointment with the doctor to get expensive, sedating drugs that may or may not actually work. Or maybe this year the treatment will be a painful and even more expensive series of testing and shots.
You should always take the medicines your doctor prescribes, but there are lots of things you can do on your own to get symptoms under control with or without medication. Here are the top ten.
1. Get to pollen before it gets to you
Buy a HEPA filter for every room in your house. Close your windows during peak pollination time for trees and grasses, which in most parts of the world is 4 to 6 in the morning. Don't dry your clothes on a line outside, dry them in the dryer.
2. Get your antishistamines from food, not the drugstore
The plant compound quercetin is a natural antihistamine, stopping the reaction that causes tiny packets of histamine in the cells lining your nose to burst when you come in contact with an allergenic substance. You can get quercetin in fruit, especially grapefruit, fruit juices, especially grapefruit juices, and most crunchy vegetables. If you take an over-the-counter or prescription medication for allergies, however, you may not be able to eat fruit or drink fruit juice because quercetin also can slow down the liver's detoxification process that clears out the drug.
3. Use nasal sprays sparingly
Chances are, if you just use a nasal spray for a day or two, it won't cause you any harm. But if you use a nasal spray throughout your pollen season, you can wind up with a symptom you are trying to treat, stuffy nose. Even worse, you can have rebound symptoms when you quit using a nasal spray that are worse than your symptoms when you start. If you have to use a nose spray at all, don't use it for more than 5 days.
4. Be careful about outdoor burning
It can be tempting to burn the leaves you forgot to rake last fall, but if you happen to get poison oak, poison sumac, or poison ivy into the mix, the smoke can give you allergies that are very, very difficult to treat.
5. Be careful about indoor burning
Never burn firewood that has been treated with preservatives or creosote. If it's green (treated with arsenic) or sticky (treated with creosote), the chemicals released from burning can aggravate allergies and have other toxic effects.
6. Keep your basement dry
Damp basements are usually moldy basements, and molds can cause severe upper respiratory symptoms. And if you have to dry out your basement, try to ventilate it without spreading mold and mildew spores through the rest of your house.
7. Take vitamin C
You don't need the high (2,000 mg) doses of vitamin C often used to treat colds if you are trying to prevent allergies. Just 100 to 500 mg a day is enough to reduce your immune system's reactions to substances to which you may be sensitive.
8. Make sure your vacuum cleaner is fitted with a HEPA filter
Otherwise, you may be spreading dust and dust mites around your home as quickly as you vacuum them up.
9. Wash bedding in hot water at least once a week
Wash bedding to remove dust mites, which cause not just allergic reactions but which sometimes contribute to the form of acne known as rosacea. Plastic covers on mattresses keep dust mites out of the air.
10. Do acupressure facial massage at least once a day
An analysis of 92 medical studies sponsored by the World Health Organization found that acupressure was as effective as antihistamines in controlling short-term symptoms, and more effective than any other method for preventing recurrent allergy attacks.
No comments:
Post a Comment