If you’re a seasonal allergy sufferer, you probably take antihistamines to treat your allergy symptoms including itchy eyes, runny or stuffy nose, and sneezing. But antihistamines come with many unpleasant side effects including drowsiness, dizziness, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, mental confusion, restlessness, anxiety and blurred vision. For many the side effects are worse than the allergy symptoms, so they just suffer through it.
Understanding Allergies
When your body recognizes something as an allergen such as pollen, dust mites, pet dander or ragweed, it overreacts to the allergen by creating chemicals called histamines. Histamines try to attack the allergen but they end up causing the symptoms of sneezing, runny nose, and scratchy eyes. In severe cases, allergies can cause swelling and hives and can put you in danger of anaphylaxis. Antihistamines work by blocking histamine production that causes the reactions.
Preventative Treatment
The best way to avoid allergies is to prevent them. However, it’s virtually impossible to limit exposure to pollen during the spring and summer, so that’s not the answer. An effective way to prevent allergies is to boost your immune system to work properly so that it doesn’t overreact to allergens and produce histamines.
Chiropractic care delivers benefits to allergy sufferers by working at the cause rather than treating symptoms after they’ve appeared. Adjustments can remove stress to the nerves caused by misalignment of the joints and vertebrae in your spine. The misalignments can cause disruption in your body’s ability to communicate through nerve pathways to the brain. By correcting your alignment, the chiropractic adjustment corrects this miscommunication and enables your body’s immune responses to work more effectively, thus preventing allergy attacks rather than treating the symptoms.
Other natural complementary therapies that assist in boosting your immune system to help fight allergic responses include massage, aromatherapy, acupuncture and immunotherapy.
- Massage can help relieve sinus pressure and provide some relief during allergy attacks.
- Aromatherapy oils can help clear sinus passages if you have a stuffy nose or help relieve a sinus headache.
- Acupuncture can help boost your immunity to help prevent allergy attacks.
- Immunotherapy is often given in the form of allergy shots, but a more natural approach is to buy local bee pollen and take small amounts every day to build up your immunity to seasonal pollen.
Whichever natural treatments you choose, you may find prevention and relief from allergy attacks without the side effects of antihistamines.