Natural Remedies for Seasonal Allergies ✨ Ep. 66 [RE-AIR]
Apr 30, 2024
Wendy Kathryn
Are you someone who suffers from seasonal allergies? Until a few years ago, I thought I had a super power that allowed me to side step allergy season. But after moving to Virginia, seasonal allergies hit me hard. The itchy eyes, sinus pressure, and headache-y feeling is downright miserable. So today, i’m telling you all about the natural remedies that have allowed me to actually enjoy springtime.
This is one of my most requested episodes. No one wants to move through Spring like a Zombie because the pollen in the air is making you sick. In this episode, I share my experience dealing with seasonal allergies for the first time after moving across country, my scary experience with Claritin and all the things I've done to relieve my allergies, naturally.
Listen for an in-depth explanation of my favorite natural remedies, lifestyle changes and the most effective natural solutions that I have found. Many of my suggestions involve overall lifestyle changes that can help with many aspects of your health.
Are you someone who suffers from seasonal allergies? Until a few years ago, I thought I had a super power that allowed me to side step allergy season. But after moving to Virginia, seasonal allergies hit me hard. The itchy eyes, sinus pressure, and headache-y feeling is downright miserable. So today, i’m telling you all about the natural remedies that have allowed me to actually enjoy springtime.
This is one of my most requested episodes. No one wants to move through Spring like a Zombie because the pollen in the air is making you sick. In this episode, I share my experience dealing with seasonal allergies for the first time after moving across country, my scary experience with Claritin and all the things I've done to relieve my allergies, naturally.
Listen for an in-depth explanation of my favorite natural remedies, lifestyle changes and the most effective natural solutions that I have found. Many of my suggestions involve overall lifestyle changes that can help with many aspects of your health.
Post a screenshot and what you loved and and tag me on instagram @wendy_toxinfreeish
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Speaker 1:
Are you someone who suffers from seasonal allergies, like I do? People can suffer from allergies all year round, don't get me wrong, but come springtime, when all the plants start to bloom, it can be a real doozy. I'm actually new to the whole having allergies thing and let me tell you, the itchy eyes, sinus pressure, headachy feeling is downright miserable. If you are someone who takes allergy medication but would love to find a natural alternative that actually works, or maybe you're somebody who has been trying natural remedies and it doesn't really seem to take the edge off the way you need, then this episode friend is for you. Hey there, my name is Wendy and I'm an environmental toxins lawyer who is obsessed with showing women how to toss the toxins out of their life and embrace a more holistic lifestyle. I'll be dishing up bite-sized but binge-worthy episodes on all things detox, low toxins, what's bad toxin and what is it really doing to my health? I'm breaking it all down for you, separating the myths from the facts and pulling back the curtain on the products and beauty industry. You'll hear my unfiltered and sometimes unpopular, but honest opinions. No topic is off limits. We'll dive into what's really causing our thyroid issues, hormone imbalances, infertility and more. Think of it as a crash course for all things holistic living, but for real life, you don't have to do everything, you just have to start somewhere. Let me show you how.
Speaker 1:
This is the Detox Dilemma Podcast. Welcome to episode 11 of the Detox Dilemma Podcast. This is your host, wendy, and today we're going to talk about something that has popped up in my voice message requests and, if you weren't aware, you can leave me a voicemail. If you go down to the show notes, there is a link to my SpeakPipe website and you can leave me a voice message. You can ask for and request a specific topic and if I get enough of them or sometimes, I'll do them even if I get one. But in particular, I got a lot of requests for natural remedies to seasonal allergies, and that's probably due to the fact that, well, it's the beginning of spring and the flowers are blooming and the sun's out and the birds are chirping and people with seasonal allergies are feeling pretty freaking miserable right now. I did want to start this episode with a personal note, though.
Speaker 1:
I am somebody who, in the whole history of their entire life up until recently, had never, ever, ever, suffered from so much as a sniffle from seasonal allergies. I know that makes me very lucky. I have moved multiple times in my adult life and everyone around me swore that at some point I would move somewhere where the allergies would kick in, somewhere. I grew up in the desert in Arizona. I spent time living in St Petersburg, russia, while I was studying abroad Fun fact about me I double majored and one of my majors was Russian language. And then I moved to San Diego for law school and stayed for a long time Still no allergies. I then moved to Naples, italy, for five years still no allergies. And you know, I just thought I was that person that was never going to have any allergies.
Speaker 1:
And then, two and a half fateful years ago sounds so dramatic. Myself and my two kids moved to an area of Virginia that is in the Shenandoah Valley, and I moved here for a boy who would become my husband or, I guess, a man. He'd probably be upset to hear me call him a boy. I fell in love with a man and my kids and I moved to this beautiful, stunningly beautiful area where we live on a lake and in the woods, and it is truly dreamy that I have a life here. I am very, very lucky, and the whole first year that I lived here in Virginia I had no problems whatsoever. Now my husband suffers from seasonal allergies, but myself nor my kids have ever had a problem.
Speaker 1:
And then year number two came around and out of freaking nowhere, not just myself but both of my children started experiencing symptoms of seasonal allergies and one day I woke up so miserable I had so much pressure on my head and in my sinuses. My eyes felt like they were glued shut. They hurt so bad I like didn't even know what to do with myself. And I remember thinking is this what people who have seasonal allergies deal with? This is terrible. And at that point I actually wished it was a migraine. And I thought it was a migraine in the beginning, but then it was persistent and I suffered from migraines for 20 years. And then, when I ditched synthetic fragrance for my daughter who, as a baby, had eczema, my migraines disappeared. So synthetic fragrance is a trigger for my migraines and was for 20 years, and I had no idea. So I hadn't had a migraine in years at this point. And the reason why I wished it was a migraine was because migraines eventually go away and this was every freaking day I would wake up and I just felt like a bus landed on my head.
Speaker 1:
So if you're somebody out there listening who has seasonal allergies, I'm so, very sorry. I have so much, so much empathy. So once I realized this was seasonal allergies, I of course I'm sure none of you were surprised to hear when, online, I did a ton of research. You know what are the natural ways that I could help manage this and support my body and support my immune system, because allergies is an immune response I researched all the things and then I ordered all the things. I ordered all the natural remedies that I'm going to talk about in a second.
Speaker 1:
But in the meantime, my husband, who at the time took Claritin on a daily basis this 24-hour Claritin and I was so miserable and out of desperation. Even though I'm not somebody who likes taking medication, I'm not completely opposed to it. When you need it, you know you need it. So I took one and I, within 30 minutes, felt so much better. The pressure lifted and the sky cleared and the clouds came out and I mean it wasn't quite like that, but I felt so much better. So every morning I would wake up miserable and I would take a Claritin while I was waiting for all of these fabulous natural remedies to show up and I'm going to share this because I think it's really important.
Speaker 1:
I, within three days, fell into the most deep depression. I was crying uncontrollably. It was like watching myself on the outside. I felt like my life was miserable and awful and I wanted out of it and I was angry at my husband and I had all these really irrational, horrible thoughts in my head and I told my husband. I said there's something wrong with me. I am a very happy positive. See the bright side. There's a lesson in all of this. Like I really see the glass half full always. And I was not okay and I told him. I said there is something so wrong with me. So a thought entered my mind and I got online and I Googled Claritin side effects and let me just say I've never had such an easy time finding thousands of people with the exact same set of side effects and tons of documented research showing things like Claritin, singular and even decongestants like Benadryl.
Speaker 1:
If you start going through all of the studies agitation, aggressive behavior, bad and vivid dreams, deep depression, suicidal thoughts, disorientation, hallucinations, irritability I mean the list goes on and on, even if you go back to the original trials for Claritin, you found people with these deep depression, suicidal thought, mental disorders, and that was a huge shock to me. I'm used to finding medications that have these really long-term side effects and it was really confusing and upsetting to me to so easily on the internet find such significant and awful side effects for a drug, multiple drugs that are sold over the counter, given to children. A lot of these side effects that I found in the people that are reporting these were children having these episodes, and the thing about pharmaceuticals is their intention is to turn something off or turn something on, and when you turn something in your body on or off, there's always a consequence, and those consequences are those risks and those side effects that happen because of whatever it is you turned on or whatever it is that you turned off. Oftentimes you're turning off an immune system response so that, if your immune system doesn't effects, that happen because of whatever it is you turned on or whatever it is that you turned off. Oftentimes you're turning off an immune system response so that, if your immune system doesn't react, you no longer have a symptom. That's how you suppress a symptom and so you take those side effects and you figure out well what's the benefit of this pharmaceutical and what are the risks, and does the benefit outweigh the risks?
Speaker 1:
And it's really shocking to me that these things aren't discussed. As a grown adult, I had never heard this discussed, and these medications are so easily accessible. So I thought it was really important to start this conversation with my story and to know what happened to me when I did use those pharmaceutical medications. I got off of it immediately and within 36 hours, all my symptoms were gone and I was myself again. So I just want you to be aware. Okay, well then I like was off this medication, but then I was miserable again. I was like, well, I can't take any of this medication, so I'm just going to lie here and be miserable until things get to my house. And so when they finally did, I was very, very happy. It all showed up and I got to work, using them one at a time, and I'm going to share with you what I researched, what I got, what worked, what didn't work, what kind of worked, and what I do now.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
So the very first thing that I did to naturally support my allergies was to get on regular probiotics. Ironically, I had already started taking probiotics right before my terrible allergy started. I was deep into my healing my Hashimoto's at this point and I had just finished a gut cleanse and I was moving on to a regular probiotic routine. And gut health issues can be directly related and a root cause of Hashimoto's, so I was really focused on my gut health at the time. But it is also a known cause of allergies, so I was killing two birds with one stone here. I wasn't surprised by this. In fact, of all the natural remedies that I researched, this one had the most data. More than 80% of your immune system and your immune function is stored in your GI tract, so it's not surprising that research keeps linking probiotic supplements to reduced risk of allergies. In fact, I found some really interesting data on pregnant women who took probiotics during pregnancy and the decrease of allergies in their children. They found that women who regularly took probiotics throughout their entire pregnancy significantly reduced their children's risk of developing allergies.
Speaker 1:
Obviously, just like anything, probiotics are not all created equal. There are crappy ones out on the market and there are quality ones out on the market. I recently did a review on about 30 or 40 probiotic brands. You can find that over on my Instagram, and I'll go ahead and share a link in the show notes as well. I actually don't know if this did anything for my allergies because, as I'm about to tell you, I have done some other things as well, and taking these probiotics have just been a part of my regular health routine. But I will say I don't think it's hurting.
Speaker 1:
The next thing that I got was this little bulb thing that you squeeze. It's a nasal rinse, and this is something you can do also with a neti pot. If you are using a neti pot, make sure that you use distilled water. Using tap water can be really problematic with the toxins that are in it. You can also find brain eating amoebas and even though it is rare, it does happen, and when it does happen it's on the news and then sometimes I see it and it stresses me out. So if you're going to use a nutty pot or put a bunch of water up your nose, make sure you are using distilled water.
Speaker 1:
They call this sinus irrigation, which is fun words to say, and it actually originated from Ayurvedic medicine. It's a traditional treatment for allergies. There's a lot of really good data on it. It is a natural way to rinse out any allergens or congestion that's in your nasal passage. It also has been proven clinically that using a neti pot or doing this sinus irrigation, whatever they call it, is beneficial for preventing and treating several upper respiratory conditions, chronic and acute sinusitis, the common cold and seasonal allergies. I don't enjoy doing this, but I love how I feel afterwards. This is definitely something that worked really well for me as far as relieving the pressure.
Speaker 1:
The next thing I did was invest in a vacuum cleaner that had a HEPA filter, and I purchased a multiple air filtration machines and put them throughout the house. I put one in our bedroom, a smaller one in our bedroom and I put a large one in our living room. Those air filters had their own HEPA filters in it, along with a bunch of other things. They're air doctors, although I think if I were to purchase air filters for my house now, I would probably purchase Medify Air. I think there's some really good technology on the market that is more cost effective, but just having that air filter in the house to produce all the particulates and the allergens when they come inside really made a difference If I didn't already have a completely toxin-free home not completely, that's impossible, but a mostly toxin-free home.
Speaker 1:
I would advise somebody to take a look at their laundry detergent, their cleaning supplies, the fragrance they have in their home, and to get rid of any additional irritants in the house that are already in the form of toxins, because if you're already being exposed to toxins and irritants, then you may be experiencing allergies because your body has just had enough. Right, that load of allergens is just too much. So by decreasing the load of irritants that you have in general, you can really help your allergy symptoms. All right. So those are kind of the lifestyle things that I changed. I got really good at wet dusting and I vacuumed a lot, and those were the things that I did first and I will say I actually noticed a difference. I still definitely had the allergy symptoms, I still wasn't feeling great, but they were a lot less than they were in the very beginning.
Speaker 1:
Okay, let's now jump into actual natural remedies. The very first remedy that I tried was actually homeopathy. So Highlands, which is a company I love, they make a allergy supplement and you guys I'm not even kidding and I understand this idea that, oh, it's the placebo effect, because you thought it was going to work. No, no, no, no, no. I I took two of these Hyland's allergy tabs and I let them melt in my mouth and 30 minutes later I had zero symptoms, zero, in fact.
Speaker 1:
I was so convinced that this stuff was amazing that I gave a bottle to my husband who, as I said, has always suffered from allergies, and he said what is that? And I said it's a new allergy medication. It's just like your Claritin, just take it. It's better for you. And by now he was used to me. So he said okay. So he started taking it and I waited a couple of days and I was like, honey, how are you feeling? And he was like, yeah, great, that stuff works great, can you get me some more? And so for me that was my blind test on whether or not it would work.
Speaker 1:
So Hyland's is what I use. I still use it regularly. I know there's like HistoX. There's a couple other homeopathy options out there that I'm sure are equally as fantastic. Highlands has six different homeopathic ingredients in it and for me it just works incredibly well. So my kids use it, I use it, my husband uses it. I can't sing its praises enough.
Speaker 1:
The other thing that I got is a vitamin called quercetin. Quercetin is basically a polyphenol antioxidant and it's naturally found in plant foods like cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli or cauliflower, and it's considered a bioflavonoid and it stabilizes the release of histamines. So it can naturally control allergy symptoms, and my goal was to maybe try to find something where, if I took it as a vitamin on a regular basis, maybe I wouldn't need to take anything for my allergy symptoms. There's a lot of science on quercetin. There was a study that was done in 2020 that showed that quercetin had anti-allergic functions that are known for inhibiting histamine production and pro-inflammatory mediators. And all of that is just a very fancy way to say that it calms down the hyperactivity of our airways and it actually really helps with allergy symptoms. It's so powerful that researchers have found evidence suggesting that quercetin could possibly control peanut allergies. Obviously, do that under the supervision of a doctor. That's a very serious thing, but that is some really exciting research.
Speaker 1:
The thing about quercetin is it's not immediate. It takes time. It's something you need to take long-term, and so the advice that I got was to, a few weeks before spring arrives, start taking it as part of your daily supplement routine. I'm also sure it's no surprise to anybody listening to this. One of the other things that I did was lean into essential oils. There's some awesome data on eucalyptus and how well eucalyptus works for allergies. There was one really interesting study that took a look at the effects of a bunch of different essential oils and the ability to kill highly allergenic house mites so anybody that has house mite allergies and they found that eucalyptus was the most potent. So I actually diffuse lemon, lavender, peppermint and eucalyptus in my house all day long during the springtime. Everybody knows in my home don't put anything else in that diffuser that we've got all of those allergy oils pumping all day long, and every once in a while, if I start to feel like an itch in my eye or I can see that there's like symptoms coming up, I'll walk over with a towel and I'll put a towel over my head and I'll lean over my diffuser and I'll just take some really big inhalations of it, and that works like a charm. And finally, the thing that has truly become my secret weapon when it comes to managing these allergies while I am waiting for summer to come and for them to magically go away Stinging nettle leaf.
Speaker 1:
Stinging nettle leaf naturally controls histamines. It's amazing, the science is amazing, and I found a product that I absolutely love. It is a herbal tincture made by Organic Oliviaivia, which is one of my favorite brands for really high quality herbs, and this tincture is called the allergy defense tonic and when I started using this regularly, the amount of times of the day and the amount of days in general that I need to take my highlands homeopathic has been reduced significantly. I feel so much better. I feel more clear. It's really amazing. So if you're looking for stinging nettle, you can get some tea. You can drink it in your tea or you can get a tincture like the one that Organic Olivia makes, but it is really a fantastic natural way to help naturally control your histamine reaction.
Speaker 1:
Now I know I'm going to get messages from people saying you should eat honey local honey in your area and that will help. I actually started doing that from the minute that I got here and I don't think it does anything. I mean, I've read some of the research. It's kind of inconclusive. I don't know. We do buy local honey. Who knows if it's helping Maybe. I mean it's not hurting anything and it's delicious.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so let's recap. Get yourself some really good high quality probiotics. Get some sinus irrigation going whether that is a neti pot or one of those little squirters like I have, dust regularly. Vacuum with a HEPA filter. Invest in an air filter, if you can. Try adding some quercetin to your supplement routine during the spring season. Grab yourself some essential oils, some lemons and lavender, some peppermint and some eucalyptus. Try some stinging nettle tea or a tincture and get yourself some Highlands homeopathic allergy remedies.
Speaker 1:
I hope this helped and I hope that what I have been through will benefit somebody listening to this. Don't forget to share the show with friends and tag me on Instagram. I love interacting and seeing what my community is up to, and I may even share your post right back and tag you. If you're not already on my email list, hop down into the show notes, click the link and join my weekly toxin free tips and sips. That's where I really get personal and really serve my community. I love coming into your inbox and sharing a piece of myself. It's not so easy to get personal on Instagram or on social media, or even on a podcast, but in email you usually get the real and the raw me. Take care, friends, and I'll see you next week.