Prepare for Hayfever Season

Acupuncturist Philippa Summers takes a look at factors affecting hayfever and actions that can help, including acupuncture, to minimise it's potentially disruptive and uncomfortable effect through spring and summer 

Spring bulbs are pushing through the soil and catkins are dangling from the trees, uplifting signs that winter is on its way out and spring will soon be here but also heralding the start of hayfever season, which often begins in March. For some people hayfever is a mild irritation, for others it can cause significant misery, severely impacting their ability to enjoy time outside.

Symptoms

• Runny or blocked, itchy nose
• Sneezing
• Excess mucus
• Blocked, inflamed, painful sinuses
• Red, sore, itchy, streaming eyes

Treatment Options
Many people rely on antihistamines along with nasal steroid sprays and eye drops for symptom relief, and for more severe symptoms immunotherapy may be an option, but not everyone is comfortable taking medication. Antihistamines can leave you feeling drowsy, sometimes with other side effects like dizziness and headaches, and they dry the mucous membranes thickening the mucus and often causing greater congestion.

Acupuncture can help without causing side effects, particularly with nasal and sinus symptoms. It is most effective when started before symptoms begin enabling a root cause approach to help regulate the immune response but can also help reduce symptoms during a flare up. A review of 13 research studies which included 2365 people with allergic rhinitis (hayfever), found acupuncture to be a safe and efficacious treatment improving their quality of life.

Reducing exposure
The most effective way to help is to reduce exposure to pollen. Keep an eye on pollen counts and be more vigilant when it is high. According to the Met Office, who publish a pollen forecast. along with other useful information on hayfever, tree pollen allergies generally run from March to mid-May, grass from May to July and weed pollens from the end of June to September.

• Limit time outside, choose where you spend time, head for the coast

• Wear a sunhat with a brim and wrap around sunglasses
• Smear a light layer of vaseline around the rim of your nostrils to trap pollen
• Change top half of clothing and wash face and hands after being outside
• Wipe pets with a damp cloth to remove pollen
• Keep windows closed
• Limit line drying of clothes and bedding
• Wash clothes regularly

Other measures

• Avoid or limit wheat, dairy, greasy foods and sugar which can all encourage mucus
• Diet has an impact on immune regulation, an antioxidant rich, anti-inflammatory diet like the mediterranean diet may help
• Use a Neti pot to flush nasal passages with saline which can help with nasal symptoms and congestion

If you have not experienced acupuncture before then rest assured it is a very gentle relaxing treatment, and for hayfever it is best to start a course of treatment before symptoms begin to flare. Please get in touch if you’d like to book or find out more.