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Zap Spring Allergies With These Natural Remedies

If spring’s blossoms have left you red-eyed and runny-nosed, don’t rush straight to the medicine chest.

By Reader's Digest Editors

If spring’s blossoms have left you red-eyed and runny-nosed, don’t rush straight to the medicine chest. Many drugs simply treat the symptoms of allergic reactions, which can often be easily prevented in the first place. Here are a few natural ways to keep your allergies at bay:

Avoid pollen. Most plants pollinate in the early hours of the morning, so try to postpone outdoor activity to the afternoon. Also, try taking a quick shower and changing your clothes every time you come home to rinse off stray pollen.

Find the triggers in your home. Mold, dust mites, and pollen in your house can all inflame allergies. Use a diluted bleach solution to clean mold in basements, garages, and on old patio furniture.

Avoid using window fans to cool rooms. They can suck pollen indoors.

Turn on the dehumidifier. You should keep humidity levels below 50 percent to kill dust mites, but above 30 percent to avoid making your home too dry.

Invest in a good air filter and change it every two to three months.

Keep windows closed when driving. If it’s hot, use the air conditioner instead.

Eat foods rich in omega-3s. These include fish, eggs, walnuts, and flaxseed oil.

Wash bed linens at least once a week in 130-degree water. That’s how hot it should be to kill dust mite eggs.

Wear a mask while doing housework, which can stir up allergens.

Bedroom items that can’t be washed, such as pillows, mattresses and box springs, should be covered in tightly woven, hypoallergenic dust-mite covers. Stuffed animals and throw pillows should be eliminated or kept to a minimum.

Clean your pets. Wipe off their paws when they come home and wipe down their fur after they’ve been outside

Rinse out your nose with a simple saline solution. Clear the pollen from your passages using a Neti pot or a spray bottle.

Instead of drugs, take a few herbs. To alleviate a runny nose and sinus congestion, try freeze-dried stinging nettles. Eyebright can soothe red, itchy, watery eyes. And the supplement quercetin, a bioflavonoid often found packaged with Vitamin C, can also be an effective antihistamine. Butterbur can alleviate symptoms of grass allergies.

See also: 6 Cities to Avoid This Allergy Season

Sources: The Washington Post, Motherearthnews.com, WebMD.com

Your Comments

  • http://www.natural-homeremedies.com Natural Cure

    Nice……. nice information also…. thanks for share. Home remedies are also preferred by many because of a belief that the pharmaceutical companies are not interested in your health.

  • http://www.drwyatts.com herbal medicine

    How are herbs used? For the reasons described in the previous section, herbalists prefer using plant extracts from the whole herb or various parts such as roots, flowers, seeds, etc., rather than extracting single active ingredients from them. Herbal extracts have many components and are usually too complex to manufacture synthetically by the pharmaceutical industry. 

  • http://www.drwyatts.com Natural medicine

    When you get sick, you go to the doctor. And the doctor will, of course, prescribe medicines. You will go and buy medicines. You take them, and hopefully, you get well. This is how the health profession goes on nowadays a cycle of diagnosis and prescription.If anyone were to give you herbs for medicine, you would probably say that that person was a quack but a few natural herbs can help relieve stress.