Allergy Season. Allergy Relief.
It’s that time of year again. The birds are singing, the fruit trees are blooming, and the air is pollen soup! You come in from a walk in the yard and you feel like you snorted a powdered cat. Itchy eyes, sneezing, runny nose. Those who suffer from seasonal allergy know the misery.
Physicians in the early 1800s name the phenomenon of seasonal allergies “hay fever,” believing that the smell of hay was at the root of the symptoms. This was a time when the word fever often connoted a deadly condition. We can imagine the wretchedness of allergy symptoms during a time without antihistamines, air filters, and even running water to shower off the daily pollen accumulation. Given that wheezing and severe airway inflammation occurs in many hay fever victims, some of our allergy prone ancestors did die from hay fever.
I come from a line of allergic people. Every spring when every oriface of my face is inflamed and I can’t stop sneezing, my thoughts turn to my allergic ancestors. I think about how much they would have loved to get their hands on some Claritin or Zytec.
I am not (entirely) ungrateful to live in an era where antihistamines and many other pharmaceutical symptom relievers are easily accessible. Over the counter antihistamines have relieved me of the anguish of allergy symptoms many times. But they have also left me with some side effects I did not appreciate. Claritin dries me up so badly that my nose bleeds. Zyrtec makes me nauseaus and dizzy, and once made my heart race. Benadryl leaves me mentally foggy for days. All of them make me tired. As far as possible side effects go, what I have experienced has been relatively benign.
All medications have potential negative effects. We never know who will experience an unwanted reaction. I have seen Zyrtec (also known as cetirizine) cause severe psychiatric side symptoms. It is well documented that the drug can lead to psychosis and delusional thinking. It can also bring about anxiety, insomnia, depression, agitation, nightmares, and suicidal thoughts.
Ten percent of people who take a Claritin (loratadine) will get a headache from the drug. Very few people will have more serious reactions, but rare serious side effects can occur. Claritin is known to cause seizures, liver injury, hair loss, abnormal breast growth, and thrombocytopenia (a potentially life threatening loss of platelets, the cells responsible for blood clotting).
Benadryl (diphenhydramine) blocks the effects of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter key to cognition, memory formation and memory recall. Blocking acetylcholine leads to drowsiness, brain fog, and confusion, which is why we are advised to avoid operating heavy machinery when taking Benadryl and similar drugs. Long term use of Benadryl is associated with greatly increased risk of dementia.
I hear some readers thinking, “this is why I only take Allegra.” While Allegra (fexofenadine) does have a less severe documented side effect profile than other antihistamines, it can still cause nosebleeds, dizziness, back pain, vomiting, nightmares, nervousness, and anxiety in those who take it for allergy relief.
I want to repeat that I am very grateful to live in a time when antihistamine drugs are available. These drugs have relieved me of enormous misery on many occasions. But they come with a cost. They have side effects and they also lose their effectiveness with repeated use, leading to allergy sufferers needing to change medications or take higher doses of the drugs. They cost ever increasing amounts of money and because they are over the counter, they are rarely covered by commercial insurance plans. Most importantly, they do not heal allergies. Symptom suppression is not the same as healing.
I am interested in freeing myself from pharmaceutical dependence and also in healing my body. If you are reading this, you probably share the same interests. So let us delve into some natural remedies that relieve allergy symptoms and can also heal the underlying inflammatory roots of allergies.
Nettles (Urtica dioeca)
Like every herbalist of the wise woman tradition, I love nettles. All over the world people have traditionally eaten nettles and used the plant as a fiber source for making ropes, fishing nets and clothes. Nettles are a super food, high in calcium, iron, selenium, vitamin A, B complex vitamins, and magnesium. They contain more vitamins and minerals than any other land plant. Only the seaweeds have a higher vitamin and mineral content.
Nettles pop out of the ground in the early spring, right when allergy season begins. As a naturalist and a romantic, I do believe that the world poetically provides us what we need when we need it. The fresh nettle plant blocks histamine and other inflammatory chemicals in the human body. Those of us with an accessible nettle patch can harvest some fresh leaves (but be careful, they sting when you touch them!), put them in a mason jar, cover with boiling water and steep, then drink the fresh nettle tea as a daily allergy reliever.
If you don’t have nettles in your garden or in the wildlands nearby, don’t despair. The plant retains it’s strong antihistamine properties when freeze dried, and freeze dried nettles are readily available at any health food or herb store or on-line herb distributor.
Freeze dried nettles effectively relieve allergy symptoms for most people who take them. They are safe for babies, pregnant women, elders, and everyone who does not have a nettle allergy. The only group of people who may want to avoid nettles are those taking blood thinning medication. Like most anti-infammatory plants, nettles contain compounds that decrease platelet aggregation. Decreasing inflammatory clot production helps prevent strokes and heart attacks and is generally considered a beneficial effect, but in those taking anti-clotting medication, nettles can increase the risk of severe bleeding.
If you want to try freeze dried nettles for relieving your allergies, the dosing is as follows:
Adults take 1-4 capsules up to every four hours
Children take 1-2 capsules up to every four hours. For children too young to swallow pills, just open up the capsules and mix the green nettle powder in some applesauce or other mushy food. Nettles are not bitter or bad tasting. They just taste … green.
I find that if I drink dried nettle tea daily or near daily through the winter, I don’t have allergy symptoms in the spring. Ingesting nettle infusions for a few months before the allergy season starts heals my allergies before they get rolling.
Some people find nettles drying to the mucous membranes, which can happen with all antihistamine drugs. You can combine nettles with a moisturizing herb like marshmallow or slippery elm to counteract this potential effect.
Goldenrod (Solidago spp.)
Goldenrod gets a bad rap because of the company it keeps. Goldenrod often grows with and near ragweed, one of the biggest seasonal allergy culprits. The two plants bloom simultaneously, leading many people to believe they are allergic to goldenrod because they are miserable when the goldenrod is blooming. Ragweed is wind pollinated. It makes copious amounts of its irritating, spiky pollen. This pollen lodges in the nasal passages of allergy sufferers, causing itching, sneezing, runny nose and generalized unhappiness. Goldenrod is pollinated by bees and butterflies, and therefore it does not need to spew pollen through the airways.
Mystically, beautifully, magically, goldenrod is actually the remedy for ragweed allergy. Goldenrod soothes inflamed mucous membranes. It decongests and stops excess nasal mucous production. Goldenrod turns off sneezing and itchy eyes. And best of all, it works quickly. After taking a squirt of goldenrod tincture, I am usually free of allergy symptoms within 5 minutes. It works much more quickly than any over the counter antihistamine.
Golden rod leaves and flowers make a delicious tea. It combines nicely with nettle and mint, both of which synergize the antihistamine effects of the plant.
Goldenrod has no known drug interactions and is safe for babies, elders, pregnant women and everyone else.
Dosing:
Adults: 30-60 drops of tincture or one cup of tea up to every 4 hours
Children: 15-30 drops of tincture or 1/2 cup tea up to every 4 hours
Quercetin
Unlike nettles and goldenrod, quercetin is not an herb you can grow and harvest yourself. Quercetin occurs naturally in citrus, berries, cherries and other fruits. When extracted and refined from these sources and used as a supplement, quercetin has strong anti-inflammatory and antihistamine properties. Quercetin stabilizes and inhibits the action of mast cells, preventing these immune cells from releasing histamine, cytokines, and other inflammatory chemicals. Taking 500 mg of quercetin twice a day usually relieves allergy symptoms.
If you are interested in learning more about herbal medicine, please consider taking my 16-week course, The Herbs of Enchanted Family Medicine. Drawing on over 30 years of clinical experience, I am thrilled to teach you about the 150+ herbs in my personal apothecary. The class will cover basic botany, herbal constituents, folk wisdom and mythical lore, as well as current scientific understanding of medicinal plant actions. You can learn more about the course and sign up here:
Wishing you the best of health!