Spring – everyones excited, the suns out winters moving on, there’s smiles, birds and butterflies…… and you want to stay inside with the windows shut, the air filter on and debating reverting to covid mask precautions!!

Oh the joys of spring! Australia is one of the worst places in the world for hayfever. You may experience a mix or one of these symptoms –  runny nose, frequent sneezing, blocked sinuses, fatigue, sore and itchy eyes, throat, nose and ears, headaches, joint aches and pains, cough and or sometimes nausea from a post nasal drip.

All these things are from your body doing its thing to “help out” its protective. It recognises the pollen, dander, grass, whatever the irritant is for you, and is doing its best to keep it from going deeper into your body! It’s an immune response and its protective. The issue is when this recognition of ‘danger’ becomes oversensitive! Hey we all like the smell of cut grass – but cut grass does not love all of us!

Often the culprit that we blame in this overexcitation is histamine and some benefit can be gained by taking antihistamine medications that relives the symptoms. Which is great! But as histamine is also a neurotransmitter and these antihistamines, to different extents, depending on the formulation, cross the blood brain barrier, they have side effects and you can become tolerant to them over a period of time.

There is other ways to reduce the sneeze!!

• Reducing histamine levels innately in your body is one – high histamine levels can be one reason that you are more sensitive to when an allergen increases your levels. It is normal for an allergen to raise levels but not to a point when it has long term impact on your health.
• Assessing other areas of inflammation within your body that could be contributing to histamine intolerance
• Looking at your genetic makeup – many people have atopic immune pictures which are passed on from your parents. This can lead to a genetic poor clearance of histamine and there are ways to manage that.
• Observe dietary habits that can both aggravate histamine and also diet habits that will reduce your bodys reaction. Look at vitamin intake deficiencies that will exacerbate symptoms.

Three top tips!

• Assess your family history and see if there is a history of hayfever, asthma, excema in the past – you may need help to regulate your AOC1 and HNMT genes – its not that hard!
• Look at increasing your dietary intake of high Quercetin foods – these help with the regulation of the immune response – specifically they stabalise Mast cells that reduces the amount of IgE released in the immune response.
• Try my Hayfever Support Tea and book an appointment where I can find ways to heal that are specific to you!