Hay fever can be a real drag for sufferers — itchy runny eyes, tickly throat, relentless sneezing, a blocked and runny nose. Symptoms can last for days on end, making sufferers feel lousy and draining their energy levels. Hay fever also comes at a time when many young adults are trying to study or sit for their exams, which is an added bug bear. The good news is that you do not have to suffer.
4 Effective remedies that can cure and prevent hay fever symptoms
Let’s just first understand why hay fever occurs; what is happening in the body to create these symptoms?
Hay fever, like any other allergy, exists in response to a release of histamine in the body. Histamine is the chemical (neuro-transmitter) your body produces when you’re having an allergic reaction. There is always some histamine in your body and a mosquito bite for example causes your body to release more histamine in the area of the bite, making your skin red and itchy. In extreme cases, histamine levels in someone who is allergic to a bee sting or a particular food such as strawberries can be elevated to such levels that it causes anaphylactic shock.
Histamine also regulates the body’s thirst mechanism and water intake. When we are dehydrated, the histamine production increases, this in turn swells the body tissues, including the small sacs of the lungs. Allergies and asthma cause histamine to be released because histamine is part of the body’s immune response. According to Dr. Batmenghelidj in his book ‘Your Body’s Many Cries for Water’, dehydration is the main reason for histamine release. Antihistamine medication only block some of your body’s histamine receptors (relieving some histamine-related symptoms), they do not remove histamine and can leave you feeling drowsy and unable to concentrate.
1) Sooo the clear answer is to drink more water.
What else can we do to hydrate the body in order to stop this release of histamine?
We can look to diet and remove any foods or drinks that challenge the internal balance and cause dehydration. These include wheat, sugar, caffeine, fizzy drinks, processed foods, red meat, dairy, refined carbohydrates such as white rice.
Our lifestyle can also dehydrate us, so try to find ways of coping in stressful situations for example. Support your body and mental wellbeing with plenty of self-nurturing and care.
2) Foods that help to hydrate the body and are non-challenging are:
Organic fruits and vegetables, short grain brown rice, quinoa, millet, vegetarian protein sources such as chickpeas, nuts and seeds, water, coconut water, coconut meat, dark green leafy vegetables, soaked linseeds and a constant and high quality source of Omega 3 fatty acids (read about which oil here). It is important to note that water and oil work well together — this becomes all too clear when studying the inner workings of the cell and the phospholipid membrane. In order to be properly hydrated you need them both.
3) Particular foods that help with hay fever come via our bee friends. Bee pollen is very high in B vitamins particularly Vitamin B5, which supports the adrenal glands and helps with any allergic responses in the body. Wheatgrass juice is also an excellent source of high levels of Vitamin B5.
4) Try also Lime flower tea.
I have seen some very good results with drinking this regularly during the
spring and summer, you can buy the
lime flower tea bags in any health foodshop. Boil water for tea and add the tea bag to the boiling
water. Leave for 10 min and then squeeze the tea bag to get all the goodness into the
cup. You can sweeten with honey. Drink this several times a day