How To Find a Natural Remedy for Allergies

It’s that time of the year – the time when you spend more time sneezing and dealing with watering eyes than you do enjoying the beauty that is around you. Studies and research have indicated that more than 50 million people in the United States suffer from allergies, and many of these people (over half, in fact) suffer from what is considered to be seasonal allergies. This means that when the summer starts to turn into the fall, these people are suddenly starting to find that they feel miserable, sneezing, sniffling, and itching all over.

Pharmaceutical Fixes

What do you do when you feel bad? You go to the doctor or you head to your pharmacy, looking for anything that can give you the relief that you so desperately want. When it comes to allergies, there are many options for a person to select and a lot of them can be found right in your local pharmacy on the shelves. You can select from pills and nasal sprays, and many people mix the two in order to get the best relief that they can. While you may find some relief from your sneezing and itching from nasal sprays and pills, the average person with seasonal allergies will find that these medications do not treat the nasal congestion that they have been dealing with. There have actually been studies done that show that over a third of people who suffer from seasonal allergies find no relief from the medications that they purchase. Is there a better way to solve the problem of allergies?

What Causes Allergies

Before you can get an allergy medication, or a home remedy to solve allergies, it’s a good idea to understand what causes them in the first place. When you’re talking about seasonal allergies, you’re talking about dealing with pollen. Pollen is a microscopic thing that looks much like a spiny ball. This goes into the nasal passage and actually latches itself onto the membranes in your nose that are known as the mucus membranes. These membranes are responsible for helping the body to fight off infections, which is why they are filled with immune cells. All of these immune cells are a host for histamines, which are designed to help your body fight back against foreign bodies and invaders that would do the body harm. So when pollen attaches itself to the mucus membranes, the histamines are released and all sorts of reactions, like sneezing, watery eyes, and itching, are caused, as these are the methods used by your body to get rid of the invaders causing your problems.

What to Do

If you suffer from seasonal allergies, there are a few things that you can do. First, try to make sure that you keep your home as devoid pollen contaminants as possible. Don’t use window fans to cool your rooms down because they can actually pull the pollen into the rooms, which can definitely upset your allergies. If you’re driving somewhere and you get hot, instead of rolling down the window, turn on the air conditioner. Yes, it’s worse for the environment, but it can save you a great deal of frustration.  When late August hits, it’s time to start staying indoors as much as possible until there is frost on the ground, as this is when the pollen counts are at their peak.

There are a number of drug-free ideas that you can use to help you fight back against allergies. Neti Pots have actually become very popular. Neti Pots are little vessels that look much like what a genie’s lamp would look like. If you’re trying to get rid of allergies, you simply fill the Neti Pot with warm salt water, tip your head sideways over a bowl, and allow the water to go from one nasal passage to the other, flushing out everything that is in your nose. The idea of putting water through your nose can be strange for many, but it is an extremely effective way to get rid of the symptoms of allergies.

There are also other things that you can look for to help give you relief from the allergies that you’re fighting. One of them is stinging nettle. Stinging nettle is a natural form of antihistamine and has many of the same effects as the drugs that you can purchase in the pharmacy. It’s commonly found in many parts of the United States but you would most likely want to purchase it in pill form, and you can find it this way at many local health stores and online. Studies have shown that people who take around 300 mg of stinging nettle every day will be able to achieve some relief from the seasonal allergies that are plaguing them, and won’t have any of the side effects that come from the allergy medications in the pharmacy.