Are your allergies making it difficult for you to perform your daily activities? You are not alone. Allergies can get rather overwhelming, especially during summer and spring, and make your life uncomfortable. Fortunately, there are various ways you can get some relief from their symptoms.
Let’s explore some effective tips for allergy relief:
Natural Remedies For Allergies
Try out these four natural remedies to get relief from your allergies:
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Use Neti Pot + Saline Rinse
The nasal passage is made up of various small passageways. All of these passages include nooks and crannies where pollen and dirt get collected. Unless these foreign objects are expelled, your body will keep on trying to get rid of them from your system. This may result in watery eyes, sneezing, coughing, and a runny nose.
Using a neti pot will help in flushing out those foreign objects from your nasal passage. This will provide you relief from the allergic symptoms.
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Try Acupuncture
Acupuncture helps in treating a range of health problems, including immune deficiency, muscle weakness, pain, digestive issues, and depression. According to a study, acupuncture can also help in reducing the symptoms of allergy naturally. Make sure you go to a reliable acupuncturist to get optimal benefits from the treatment.
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Make Changes in Your Diet
Your diet can play a major role in maintaining your overall health, including getting quality sleep and your mood or stress levels. It also significantly affects your weight, skin, and energy levels.
Moreover, it also helps your body in managing allergies. The healthier your body is, the better equipped it is to fight allergies. Food can also trigger your allergies, which is why it is essential for you to determine the food items you might be allergic to.
Following are some of the foods that might cause an allergic reaction or trigger intense allergy symptoms:
- Soy
- Wheat
- Shellfish
- Peanuts
- Pineapple
- Bananas
- Sugar
- Cucumbers
- Zucchini
- Melons
- Sunflower seeds
You can always consult an experienced nutritionist to help you in creating a right diet plan for you.
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Hydrate Yourself
Keeping your body hydrated is extremely important for managing your overall health and your allergies. While this is common knowledge, many people don’t take this seriously. Dehydration can cause many health issues.
Dehydration can affect your mood, make you feel exhausted and bloated, can cause breakouts and headaches. Moreover, it can also make your allergies worse.
Over-The-Counter Remedies
Aside from natural remedies, you can also try over-the-counter medications to reduce your allergy symptoms. These medications include the following:
Antihistamines: These can assist in relieving watery eyes, runny nose, itching, and sneezing. Some effective oral antihistamines are fexofenadine (Allegra Allergy), cetirizine (Zyrtec Allergy), and loratadine (Claritin, Alavert).
Decongestants: These can offer temporary relief from stuffiness. You can try oral decongestants like pseudoephedrine (Afrinol, Sudafed, or others) or use a nasal spray like phenylephrine (Neo-Synephrine), or oxymetazoline (Afrin). However, make sure you only utilize these for a couple of days in a row because their long-term usage can make the symptoms more intense.
Nasal Sprays: These sprays can reduce the symptoms and don’t have any major side effects. But, these are most effective when they are utilized before the symptoms start appearing.
Combination Medications: Various medications combine a decongestant with an antihistamine, which can be beneficial for allergy relief; for instance, fexofenadine-pseudoephedrine (Allegra-D) and loratadine-pseudoephedrine (Claritin-D).
Taking Precautions To Prevent Allergies
Following are some precautions you can take to prevent allergies and reduce the intensity of the symptoms:
Limit Exposure to Triggers
It is essential to determine what can trigger your allergies. Here are some precautions you can take:
- Try to avoid going outside during windy and dry days. It is best to go out after rain as it clears the pollen from the environment, reducing the chances of triggering your allergies.
- Avoiding gardening chores like weed pulling and lawn mowing that stirs up your allergens. It is best to hire help or swap chores with a family member.
- Immediately change the clothes you were wearing when outside, and taking a shower to eliminate the pollen from hair and skin.
- Avoid hanging your laundry outdoors as pollen and other allergens can easily stick to your towels and sheets.
- Whenever you are performing any outdoor chores, always wear a pollen mask.
It is best to identify your triggers, be it food, pollen, dust or anything else and then take measures to avoid those triggers to prevent or reduce the extent of your allergic reactions.
Prep Your House
There aren’t any miracle products that can destroy allergens from your house. Therefore, it is best to prep your house to prevent and reduce the allergens from entering the air inside. Here are a few suggestions:
- Utilize air conditioning in the car and house
- Make sure that the filters in the air conditioner and air heating system is highly efficient, regularly cleaned and properly maintained.
- Utilize a dehumidifier to keep the indoor air dry
- Utilize a portable HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) indoors, especially in the bedroom
- Ensure all the floors and carpets are regularly vacuumed and swept
- Keep the plants and flowers that trigger your allergies away from your house
- Keep the food allergens away from your house and inform your loved ones about them too so you don’t accidently consume the food item you are allergic to
These tips will ensure that your house is clear from any possible allergens.
When To See The Doctor
In some cases, natural remedies and over-the-counter medications are not enough to reduce or eliminate the symptoms. If you have tried all these tips and nothing seems to work for long-term, then there are still ways to treat them.
It is best to consult your doctor so that you can get examined properly. You might be asked to take blood tests or skin tests to determine the exact causes of the symptoms. Your doctor will then create the appropriate treatment plan for you and take necessary measures accordingly.
A good treatment option for certain inpiduals is allergy shots. These are also called desensitization and include getting regular injections that contain a certain amount of the substance you are allergic to. With time, these shots decrease the reaction of the immune system that results in the symptoms.
If you are looking for an experienced acupuncturist or want nutritional counseling to attain allergy relief, then feel free to make an appointment with our experts at Alliance Orthopedics.