Signs that allergy season is among us! Find relief from your seasonal suffering with these natural remedies and tips.
Spring is here! The days are getting longer, it's starting to get warmer outside, the trees and flowers are budding, and I cannot stop sneezing.
As a kid and to this day, I have terrible heat intolerance and seasonal allergy symptoms. I often get hives out of the blue or if I sweat. During the spring and fall months, I would find when I eat certain foods, even foods that are deemed safe for me to have, I would break out in hives and be itchy. I would also sometimes experience worsening symptoms like headaches, fatigue, watery or swollen eyes, and extra anxiety.
When I was diagnosed with my gut issue, Intestinal Candidiasis, I learned why my body would react in a negative way to almost any food I ate. Luckily, my situation improved a great deal (but only after first taking a heavy toll on me both physically and mentally during the almost 3-year-long span of healing). Even when I began to feel so much better, I was still finding myself struggling with symptoms during the spring and fall seasons, especially in the months of May and September.
In a new hunt to find out how to stop these seasonal flare-ups, I discovered the low histamine diet and a couple of natural remedies I started to practice during my bad months to help subside my symptoms.
What is Histamine?
Histamine is a chemical in your body that makes up part of the body's defense system and plays a number of different roles, but its main function is to help your body get rid of allergens. You have likely heard histamine mentioned before in relation to allergies and allergic reactions or have also taken an antihistamine at some point in your life. Medications like Benadryl, Zyrtec, Claritin, or Allegra are common allergy remedies for seasonal allergy symptom relief.
When you are suffering from seasonal allergies, the symptoms are coming from an inflammatory response stemming from the histamine release. Yet when histamine is released, it causes inflammation to alert the body of potential pathogens. In fact, histamine allows our white blood cells to find and attack pathogens, viruses, and allergies by causing the blood vessels to swell. This is a natural part of the body's immune response, and enzymes later break down the histamine to prevent it from building up and causing ill health.
Histamine can become an issue when it builds up. This can occur when the body is suffering from metabolic disturbances, such as a defect in enzyme-producing genes, that make it difficult for the body to break down and metabolize histamine in the proper way. When this happens, histamine can affect many different areas, including the brain, gut, lungs, and cardiovascular system, causing a number of unwanted symptoms.
Do not let seasonal allergies control your life! Here are a couple of natural tips and remedies you can use to give your relief from your seasonal allergies and will help you get through the day, one less sneeze at a time.
PLEASE NOTE: I am not a medical professional. Please speak to your doctor before trying any new remedies or products suggested in this post.
Finding Relief From Your Seasonal Allergies with Natural Tips
The first step is to remove high-histamine and inflammatory foods from your everyday diet
I noticed that when I change the way I eat during my triggering months, it solves some of my internal issues. Eliminate troublesome ingredients from your diet, such as dairy, high-histamine, and inflammatory foods. Fill your diet with foods that are rich in omega-3 fats, such as salmon, olive oil, flaxseed, spinach, ginger, garlic, berries, and green tea.
For more information, check out low-histamine cooking cookbooks. I follow the "4 Phase Histamine Reset Plan" in this book by Dr. Becky Campbell to help me during my bad months. It includes a list of food to eat, foods to stay away from, recipes, as well as a meal plan you can follow.
A spoonful of honey keeps the allergies away.
Eating organic local honey acts as a vaccine and can give relief to your allergy symptoms.
How does it work? When bees create honey, some of the pollen from plants they have pollinated rubs off from the bees and into the honey. Therefore, eating local honey is essentially introducing your body to the pollen in your area that is triggering your seasonal allergies. The idea is that, over time, your body will get used to these allergens and grow immune to them.
If you think you cannot eat a spoonful of honey straight, add it to your smoothies or yogurt, or enjoy it with some berries. Just do not add it to piping hot tea or hot oatmeal as the heat will kill off all the good enzymes that act as antihistamines.
Do a sinus rinse.
Every night before bed or every morning, rinse your nose with a saline solution or neti pot. This will help prevent congestion. Another helpful tip is to wash your hands and face when returning back indoors when you were outside. It will wash any excess pollen or dust off your skin. Go the extra mile and even change your clothes.
Enjoy a cup of Aller-TEA.
I discovered this blend by Autoimmuni-Tea Store and was excited to share it with you! Their soothing Aller-Tea Seasonal blend was designed to help support the body during the springtime months. This blend is packed with health-promoting herbs such as nettle, ginger, and peppermint, with a touch of licorice root, all ingredients known to ease seasonal allergy symptoms. This blend combines a variety of tasty herbs for a seasonally inspired wellness tea.
I hope these tips help you be able to go out and enjoy the weather, take in the season, and have fun with a side of relief!
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