Fall Allergy Tips

– by Dr. Eric Herman, D.C.  BioVeda Health & Wellness Center of Bethlehem, PA

If you’re allergic to ragweed pollen, fall is most likely not your favorite season. “Depending on where you live, fall is ragweed time,” says Julie McNairn, MD, an allergist/immunologist in Cincinnati, Ohio. During this time, dry leaves, grass, and hay mold harbor allergens such as mold spores and pollen.

“Seasonal allergies,” adds Dr. McNairn, “vary. You may experience symptoms one year and not the next. It’s very unpredictable,” she says. “It is also really hard to say from year to year how the allergy season will be.”

Diagnosing Fall Allergies

Like most seasonal allergies, the symptoms of typical fall allergies usually include sneezing, a runny nose, and itchy and watery eyes. These symptoms can interfere with your daily activities, impairing your ability to perform at work or school.

Ragweed pollen is one of the most common reasons for fall seasonal allergy symptoms. A hardy plant, ragweed grows everywhere, but is particularly common in the Northeast, South, and Midwest regions of the United States. Peak ragweed season starts in mid-August and lasts through October.

Ragweed pollen also is known to cause a condition known as oral allergy syndrome (OAS). In OAS, you may experience itching in your mouth and throat, along with mild swelling, after you consume fresh fruits and vegetables such as banana, cucumber, melon, and zucchini.

In addition to ragweed pollen, pollen from other plants, trees, and grass can trigger allergies in the fall. If you’re allergic, mold can also lead to a reaction during the autumn months. “Molds can be both indoor and outdoor,” says McNairn. “The only time you really get rid of the mold [outside] is if you have a lot of snow on the ground,” she says.

Tips for Managing Fall Allergies

To reduce your exposure to fall allergens such as mold and pollen, McNairn suggests the following:

• Use a dehumidifier, an electric appliance that can decrease humidity in your house, to keep the relative humidity in your home at less than 50 percent.
• Ask someone who is not allergic to clean visible mold with a diluted bleach solution.
• Regularly clean room humidifiers, because they are prone to developing mold.
• Have someone who is not allergic do yard work (raking leaves, mowing the lawn), or wear a facemask and goggles if you must do it yourself.
• Keep the windows shut and the air conditioner running when ragweed pollen levels are high.
• Shower after being outdoors and avoid taking your dirty clothes and shoes into the bedroom, to keep the room as pollen-free as possible.

Alternative Treatments

Neurological Stress Reduction Therapy or NSRT provides a novel and unique approach to wellness that is based on proven, accepted science, allowing patients who generally have very few if any treatment options to experience symptomatic relief. Our technology and science are based on these four facts:

1. Stress causes or exacerbates most health related conditions. “According to The American Medical Association (AMA), stress is the cause of 80 to 85 percent of all human illness and disease. Every week, 95 million Americans suffer some kind of stress-related symptom for which they take medication. “
2. A general reduction of stress levels can significantly decrease symptoms of many conditions.
3. The brain creates associations between stressful events and substances which are often times inappropriate and subsequently lead to a host of chronic and acute conditions. As an example, “Allergies are abnormal or inappropriate reactions of the nervous system that occur in response to otherwise harmless substances.” – Alternative Medicine Encyclopedia
4. If these associations can be broken, by introducing a positive stimulus in conjunction with the specific stress inducing substance… symptoms can be reduced or eliminated.

Stress is the key word. Our technology measures stress levels in the Autonomic Nervous System, Identifies substances that cause stress levels to rise, and couples these environmental stressors with a positive stimulus which in this case is the release of endorphins and enkephalins triggered by nerve bundle stimulation during light therapy. Endorphins and enkephalins are the body’s natural sedative and pain killer which upon release calm the nervous system breaking the previous negative association and replacing it with a neutral association. The net result is the positive conditioning or successful neurological relaxation training of the ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) to no longer respond in a stressful manner during real world substance exposure.

Why is that so important? Well, the stress response is the first step in the cascade of events that end up with sneezing, sniffling, sinus pressure, gas, bloating, diarrhea, itching, welting and burning skin irritations, wheezing and difficulty breathing. These are all symptomatic expressions the body uses to expel toxins or substances it believes are harmful to the body through the nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, integumentary (The skin) and musculo-skeletal systems.

All of these conditions can be described as being kicked off with an Autonomic Nervous System Mediated Response. NSRT (Neurological Stress Reduction Therapy) is very effective at alleviating or eliminating the triggers that lead to these symptoms.

Our devices are not meant to diagnose or treat any specific condition. The benefits of reducing stress on the nervous system however, and reducing or eliminating autonomic nervous system mediated responses can have wide reaching positive effects on a number of symptoms and conditions that previously had limited therapeutic options.

The benefits of NSRT are further magnified due to the fact that our procedure is fast, highly accurate in substance specific assessment, non-invasive, painless and effective. NSRT requires no drugs, no needles and no dietary restrictions making NSRT a safe and holistic alternative for patient care.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy is highly effective in the treatment of allergies and fully capable of stimulating the organism to heal to the point of complete relief from all allergy symptoms.

Many of us have suffered from allergies at one time in our life, and usually the best treatment offered was symptomatic relief through avoidance of the allergen or through medication. Homeopathy, on the other hand, addresses the cause of the sensitivity to allergens at the deepest possible level; avoiding the allergen (the substance responsible for the allergic response) or resorting to suppression of symptoms through ongoing symptomatic treatment becomes unnecessary once this sensitivity has been eliminated.

An Allergist is the medical specialist that commonly uses small doses of an allergen in order to desensitize a person to that allergen. This concept of using small doses of what might cause a problem in order to help prevent or heal the person is an ancient observation of healers/physicians all over the world, and it is the basis for a type of natural medicine called homeopathy.

It is therefore not surprising that one of the three physicians who founded the American Academy of Allergy was a San Francisco homeopathic physician, Dr. Grant L. Selfridge. [2] Another small and forgotten footnote in medical history involves a homeopathic physician from Scotland, C.H. Blackley, who in 1871 was the first physician to identify pollen as the cause of hay fever. [3]

The truth is that allergies can be permanently overcome. The body is incredibly made and has all the mechanisms built within that allow us to attain and maintain great health. Our innate healing abilities are so powerful that we naturally overcome the majority of problems we encounter in life.

“Think about this for a minute – what if headaches didn’t come and go, they just came and stayed? Or, imagine if you still had every cut, scrape and injury you had ever gotten – you would be a mess. Obviously, you naturally recover from many conditions because your body has internal healing capabilities”.

Symptoms are often mistaken as the cause of the problem, when really they are caused by the problem. Treating a symptom instead of a root cause is like turning off a fire alarm instead of putting out the fire. Take headaches for example. Say you choose to use aspirin or ibuprofen to control the symptoms. Time and time again, you must take these pills (why do you think you get so many aspirin in a bottle?). In most cases, the underlying cause of the headache is not changing and therefore the headaches keep coming back! Wouldn’t you rather target the underlying cause and stop the headaches from returning at all?

Do you think that taking various over-the-counter drug products for symptoms is the best way to deal with allergies? Why use temporary solutions over and over again? Your immune system needs to be normalized and strengthened so you do not have to live with allergy symptoms.

Do you know about the possible side effects of antihistamines and decongestants, the primary ingredients in many over-the-counter allergy medications? Many allergy products can cause nervousness, insomnia, dry mouth, negative reactions to other substances, stomach upset and over-sensitivity to sunlight. Additionally, many of these products will cause a rebound effect, a worsening of symptoms when the drug is discontinued. Homeopathy helps your body naturally overcome allergy symptoms with no side effects, while you stay fresh and alert.

Homeopathy is the purest form of natural medicine I have found. With over 200 years of clinical use, there are no negative side effects, no known reactions with other drugs, no contraindications for use and no addictive or habit forming properties. These outstanding results are unprecedented in the history of medicine.

Homeopathic medicines have become the first of all the natural remedies to be registered by the FDA as a drug product. Homeopathy offers a safe, natural solution backed by science, clinical experience, FDA registration and, most importantly, the tests of time.

Homeopathy is designed to work very quickly. Most people will notice initial results as early as 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Others may see results in a few minutes to a few days. Others experience a sense of lightness, accompanied by an emotional release. The corresponding sense of well being or an increase in overall energy, alertness and awareness indicates the healing response is taking place within you. Another positive sign of the healing response being activated is that you will require less and less of this natural medicine as time goes on, not more and more.

Homeopathic natural medicines are powerful. Homeopathy can be safely and effectively combined with nutritional and herbal products, as well as conventional drugs and procedures. The end results of using an all-natural approach are well worth it! Natural relief is a far healthier and often permanent solution.

Homeopathy is a very individualized healing art. A single remedy for one person with allergies may not be the same as that needed for another. Treating 10 people with allergy symptoms may require just as many different homeopathic remedies.

Homeopathy offers formulas designed to strengthen you from the inside by activating your body’s natural response system to stimulate its ability to heal itself. This approach offers relief of allergy symptoms, while formulas which work specifically on the immune system may even prevent future allergic reactions. A second approach in homeopathy acclimates you for the outside by providing homeopathic preparations of the specific weeds, grasses, trees, molds and pollens found in your geographic region. Over time, your body becomes less sensitive to the exposure of these allergens, reducing the severity and frequency allergic reactions. Using both of these approaches together provide the most complete approach to allergy correction.

This contemporary homeopathic approach is the only treatment method besides immunotherapy or allergy tests and shots that offer a chance for lasting relief or potential cure from allergies. Obviously, homeopathy offers the simplest, safest, and less costly and time-invested approach. Homeopathic allergy relief is applicable to anyone with allergies and should be the practical first choice for allergy care and correction.

[1] Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America

[2] Cohen SG. The American Academy of Allergy: a historical review. J Allergy Clin Immunol 1979;64: 332-333.

[3] Reilly D, Taylor MA, McSharry C, Aitchison T. Is homoeopathy a placebo response? Controlled trial of homoeopath ic potency, with pollen in hayfever as model. Lancet October 18, 1986; ii: 881-886.