People with pollen allergies, what do you do to deal with the symptoms?
It's hitting hard for me at the moment and it's making me miserable. What do you do to combat the torture of allergies?
::: spoiler Small rant Pollen allergies are why I really dislike Spring and Summer. I'd rather deal with a Winter cold than Spring/Summer allergies. :::
41 replies
I haven’t found an oral medication that works. Tried a nasal spray (Flonase) and felt immediate relief.
Flonase changed my life. Suffered for 25 years until I discovered it
you tried antihistamines? ceterizine, lotaradine, fexofenadine, diphenhydramine? levoceterizine(xyzal) just recently became OTC, but i never tried and i read its more or less similar to ceterizine. did you get allergy testing done?
Seconding Flonase! I buy a bottle every spring. It's basically a miracle for me.
I always start with nasal irrigation. For most of the year, nasal irrigation has eliminated my medication usage for allergies.
When it's not enough, I use flonase, but I think my sinuses mainly get irritated with prolonged exposure. Rinsing the pollen out has helped dramatically
Bouncing off this, I highly recommend the Neilmed sinus rinse if you're in a location where it's available. I have chronic severe seasonal allergies and I have to use it often. Flush out the allergens with the rinse and then Flonase 20 minutes after is my cocktail, excluding all the drugs anyway. Good luck to you
I agree. Neilmed's products are great
Yeah, after seeing it mentioned multiple times, I tried Flonase.
::: spoiler Not sure if this breaks Rule 5. If it does, let me know. I tried it and it worked a little (I've never used nasal sprays before)? I know it saids to sniff while spraying, but IDK how hard to do it. How hard to you sniff while doing it? :::
I just inhale normally when I spray. I can often feel some of it reaching my sinus. Also, my experience with Flonase has been that it needs to be used regularly for a short period to reach peak effectiveness
I hope it gives you the relief that you seek, OP
Cetirizine works like a charm for me, I only take if I start to have symptoms and I may be lucky because I've never felt any of the listed side effects.
Yo! Eat local honey! The same stuff that is making you miserable also makes happiness. And, by eating the honey, you ingest the pollen and build immunity to it. If it doesn’t work, you’ve still eaten honey and that doesn’t suck.
There's no scientific evidence that eating honey helps build any resistance to pollen allergy. Both because ingesting it doesn't expose you in any meaningful way to pollen grains as the stomach acid breaks them down almost immediately and also because most of the pollen that causes allergies is grass and tree pollen that's spread on the wind, rather than flower pollen which is spread by bees.
But, yes, local honey does have other benefits beyond allergy symptoms and is also delicious.
Antihistamines help for a short time. Local honey may help, (traces of pollen in the honey is thought to get recognized by the immune system and prevents it from treating it as an invader.
Long term, reducing your exposure to the allergen will gradually see your allergy lessen. I had an allergy to grass pollen that went away entirely in time. I developed it as a dumbass kid when I collected a handful of pollen then rubbed my eye. It was bad, and lasted for over ten years.
Unfortunately any honey, local or otherwise, has as much effect on your allergies as a placebo. The pollen that causes allergies and the pollen that bees collect are typically entirely different, and even if it is the same it gets destroyed in your gut before it can do anything.
I snort anti-histamines.
I'm only half joking. Pills did nothing for me.
But nasal sprays and eye drops give almost immediate relief. When it's particularly bad I will ask the pharmacists for two types, as "doubling up" on different active ingredients can allow for increased potency. Though that is something you should absolutely ask the pharmacist for a recommendation on, as combining any two isn't necesserily effective, or safe.
If pills work for you, but don't quite get it done, you can combine those with drops/spray too. Again, consult a pharmacist. Just tell them what you've tried, and ask for a recommendation on how to get a bit more potency.
For me, stuff that you apply directly is so much more potent, and I only tried it because a pharmacist recommended it when I said none of the pills seem to help me. It was night and day.
With the nose, it's a little tricky if it has already become stuffed. Try to clear out as much as possible, before using the spray, then let it sit for as long as you can bear. Once it starts taking effect, you really want to keep using the spray before your nose starts reacting, so it actually reaches the mucus membranes, and doesn't just hit mucus, only to be blown back out.
If you can clear out your nose by flushing your sinuses first, even better.
Another bonus of taking anti histamines this way is that it doesn't make you as drowsy, as it's applied much more locally. Though this varies. Some of the antihistamine in drops and nasal spray will still make it into the blood stream.
Medicines.
You can cure many allergies with exposure therapy. I'm surprised nobody mentioned it.
It is not perfect guaranteed 100% success for everyone, sadly. The doctor told me some people are practically cured, some have a mild improvement, and some none.
I fall in the middle ground category. Exposure therapy for 1-2 years managed to get it from being a pain in the ass to manageable. Maybe getting older also played a role, on my father's side, people seem to get less allergic in their 20s and 30s. Also, if I take a little care of what I eat, I practically have zero issues with eczema any more, while as a kid I was an itching, bloody mess if I even thought of the wrong food. So maybe it is just growing up.
Now, I can ignore most symptoms with one or even just a half ceterizine pill in summer. Generic versions are pretty cheap now.
Loratidine somehow knocks me out and makes my mood go down for 1-2 days, so I avoid it.
Suffer.
I took allergy shots for years, and I'm still doubled up on prescription and OTC meds daily. It's not perfect, but it's manageable now. So...
SufferBe inconvenienced.i rotate between different ones so i dont build significant tolerance to either one.
Xyzal
Bilastine and corticosteroid nasal spray for me. During the easier periods I can live on bilastine alone. If neither work then reduce exposure immediately, and if that doesn't help either, then make peace and wait for the sweet release of death.
First, reduce your exposure to pollen, windows and doors closed during the summer and get an air purifier to clean the pollen out.
Second, eyedrops and nasal spray, and normal eye drops work, they're just to wash the pollen out of your eyes. A steroid nasal spray really does work incredibly well to reduce immediate symptoms, Beclometasone is the active ingredient in the one I use.
Third, medication. I rarely need extra medication but my partner suffers much worse than me and uses it more. Fexofenadine based is the most effective pills we've found.
Probably not a common solution but I stopped taking all my antihistamines. It sucked for a little bit but I'm not having allergies very much anymore.
For me, i found that when the pressure in my head gets extremely bad from blowing my nose constantly, laying down for a few hours helps.
I wear headphones, so I think it traps the pressure inside. Therefore, I lay down without wearing them. (IDK if that's true or not)
Most meds for me don't help, but the Flonase nasal spray I've seen people mention does help.
Medicine, and I wear a mask when I go outside. LOL
Get real cloth handkerchiefs.
It won't rub your nose and upper lips raw.
Azelastine and loratidine 2x daily. It at least gets me through the day. Azelastine specifically has been a game changer for me with rhinitis symptoms, but it is quite a bit pricier than fluticasone (at least in the US). Worth it for me because fluticasone did literally nothing for me and had a laundry list of side effects.
I'm also currently trying a new type of allergy shots called ILIT but I had an anaphylactic reaction to the first dose so I'm not terribly hopeful.
Apart from medicine, I also bought a HEPA air purifier for my bedroom and that has helped a lot with puffy eyes and fatigue.
im not sensitive to pollen, but dust mites, which also causes my atopic dermatitis, which is a different beast than nasal allergies. i use ceterizine, diphenhydramine. nasal sprays dont do anything for me. i also have nasal symptoms.
get generic antihistamines i mention they are much cheaper online(dont buy instore generic, trial and error each one to see which one works the best. diphenhydramine will cause drowsiness though, but its useful for quick relief.
Flonase (fluticasone)
Washing face after going outside, keeping the house clean, and using an air purifier help a bit when at home.
Some people report their seasonal allergies going away after going onto a zero carb diet. We don't know why, but I can speculate it's about plant lectins binding all over the body increasing immune response in general. https://whycarnivore.com/#Allergies
Sounds like just another "cure-all" fad diet.
Its the diet humans ate before agriculture, so its got some longevity to it. However, it doesn't cure anything, it just removes everything that could be causing problems - the diet didn't fix it, removing the problem fixed it.
The only consistent thing anyone can claim about ancient human diet is how variable and adaptable it was to availability. Sure, large populations of ancient humans were carnivorous but that was more to do with living in temperate grasslands with a high amount of herd animals to provide protein and few fruit and nut bearing plants.
No claims made about any modern diet should be based on ancient or proto human diets, including paleo and all-meat or fruitarianism because ancient humans ate what they could get their hands on.
Ok, so we agree it isn't a fad. great.
Way to hear only what you want to hear from my argument, no wonder you think eating meat cures hay-fever.
If you read my comment, i was clear meat doesn't cure anything, its the removal of the foods that do sensitize some people to allergens that "cures" it.
You didn't make a cogent argument that zero carb is a fad, we both established that humans have eaten zero carb for a very long time - so we agree the eating pattern is not new.
People have always eaten plants. A lot of plants.
I'd link to some some scientific papers but fuck Elsevier.
Circling back to the top post of this thread - people have earnestly reported resolving seasonal allergies by eating zero carb. There could be lots of reasons for it :
In the 3/4 scenario something they were eating in today's food environment was causing them to be sensitive to pollen. Our food environment is hugely different then even 100 years ago, so it's hard to say what exactly is the cause, but we have reports that people eliminating many variables can resolve their issue. For the OP of this entire post that is useful information for them to have.
No doubt, but was it 85% of their energy like it is today? Or just opportunistic in season? Regardless it's off topic, the topic is allergies.
If you have actually read a paper cover to cover, and are willing to discuss it indepth - I'd be happy to read it too and have a conversation.
::: spoiler i like reading papers :::
Do you realize that number 4 is just flushing your sinuses, but badly?
When done correctly, you match the salt content of the water with your body to avoid drying out the skin inside your sinuses, allowing you to SAFELY pour in water through one nostril, and out the other. Rinsing out mucus and pollen particles alike.
It is insanely relieving, but the effect is very temporary.
What you're suggesting is just barbaric.