Wellness Wisdom: Naturopathic Approaches to Easing Seasonal Allergies

Dr. Briana Sinatra: Hello, this is Dr. Briana Sinatra, and today I wanted to share with you some helpful tips for how to minimize your allergies during the allergy season.

So, I actually never had allergies until I moved to the Bay Area…and then finally that itchy eyes, itchy nose, itchy sore throat got the best of me, and made me realize that it was not just a chronic cold. It was in fact, allergies. So I had to start implementing some of these tips for myself, for my family, they're things that I have suggested for my patients — and we have all found benefit from doing it. So, I hope that you can start implementing some of these things and find some relief yourself.

So first of all, we want to minimize the pollens that are coming into our home on our body. So first and foremost, I find it helpful to leave your shoes at the front door. Do not wear them or bring them into your house. Secondly, you want to wash your hair, wash your body, wash your clothes. If you've been outside for a long period of time, don't bring that pollen in. At the very least, if you can wash your face to get the pollen off your eyelashes, eyebrows and your skin, then that can be very helpful. And you can also do a nasal rinse through a neti pot or a NeilMed, to help clear the pollens off of your mucus membranes, so you're not continually reacting once you come inside.

In your home environment, it's really important to vacuum frequently, especially if you have carpet. Washing your bed frequently is important, too, to get the pollens off your bedding. And using an air purifier to purify your air, to remove those pollens from your home environment can be incredibly helpful — especially at night.

And reduce any other exposures that you might have in your home. So, if you know you react to your cat, this is definitely a time where you want to keep your cat or your dog out of your bedroom. You want to avoid any food allergies that you know you have, that your body might also be dealing with at that time. Just let your body deal with one thing at a time — and if allergies is the big thing for you this time of year, reduce all those other things that are stressing your system.

You also want to stay hydrated, so that your mucus membranes aren't irritated and full of histamine and dehydrated. You want to make sure that you're staying nice and hydrated, so that you can flush all that histamine and all those irritants out of your system.

So, I love for people to take a good quality multivitamin, vitamin D, fish oil and a probiotic throughout the entire year. I feel that that helps to support their membrane health and their immune health, and just keeps them healthy and robust, in general. So during the allergy season is no exception — but during the allergy season, I also like for people to take additional support. And this can include natural antihistamines, such as vitamin C and quercetin, which help to decrease and stabilize the immune cells that release histamine. So, our body isn't releasing as much histamine in response to the allergens.

And additionally, the herb nettle can be really helpful, and so can bromelain. These act as anti-inflammatories in our body, and can help reduce some of that swelling and inflammation that we get in the response to histamine and allergens. Also NAC, or N-acetyl cysteine, which is the precursor to glutathione, is a great antioxidant and it is also acts as a mucolytic to help thin our mucus in our body. So if you find that you're getting really stuffed, that NAC help to thin the mucus — and then doing the nasal rinse can help to clear that mucus from your body.

So, I hope you found some of these tips helpful. I hope they are things that you can start implementing today, so that you can still go outside and still enjoy the allergy spring time season, because there is much to enjoy during this time. But I hope you can do it with a little more comfort and a little more ease. Thank you so much for listening…until next time, take care.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us for today's special Be HEALTHistic. Join us next week for more Wellness Wisdom from the Doctors Sinatra.