By Dr Murray Grossan
With allergy, your normal thermostat is “off.” Instead of warming up from cold in the regular manner, you sneeze, cough, and hack: this does warm you up, but it starts a cascade that can last all day. When you awake from sleep, your body temperature is low or cool. If you drink hot tea, chicken soup, and some warm cereal, this warms up you body temperature and you avoid that bad morning cascade. Opening the curtains and exposing yourself to sunshine also wakes up your body’s thermostat.
With allergy, you should carry a jacket or windbreaker for going in and out of air conditioning. This can reduce symptoms. Avoid drinking iced drinks. Odors – perfume, lotions, and lipsticks – add to the allergy arithmetic. Without the lipstick your symptoms might be much less.
When you drive during allergy season, the faster you drive, the more pollen you are exposed to. Therefore, drive with your windows closed and air conditioning on.
Allergy plants pollinate at night. Therefore, close bedroom windows at night; running a filter in the closed bedroom in the daytime filters out dust and pollen. Change outside clothing in order to avoid bringing pollen into the house.
You can easily diagnose what you are allergic to. Use the various web sites – Weather Channel, www.pollen.com, to see which weed is blooming when your symptoms are worse. Then you have a diagnosis. Sometimes it is sage growing only in your own back yard! Knowing when the pollen that you are allergic to is at its worse, you can go to the beach or to a higher mountain to avoid the pollen. You can also use that information to plan your vacation to make sure you are going where there is no pollen that you are allergic to.
Pollen allergy is like arithmetic: If there is a minim of pollen and no dust or odors, you may not have symptoms. But if there is lots of dust in your bedroom plus a small amount of pollen, you may have symptoms. Factors that add to this arithmetic include:
- Poor Sleep
- Getting Chilled
- Scented lipstick and perfume
- Hot spicy foods
- Iced foods
Certain foods my also add to this arithmetic. You may be able to eat, for example, fresh strawberries anytime, except during pollen season. The reason is that fresh produce is chemically more complex, and may produce a certain amount of histamine. This can add to the big load of histamine produced by the pollen. To be on the safe side, stick to cooked or canned products.
Although some 20 million persons are allergic to pollen, there are only a certain percentage that don’t get relief with simple medication. The big secret is that your Tower ENT doctors have all kinds of samples and discount coupons for products that relieve allergy symptoms.
A common problem with seasonal allergy is that, if untreated, it can develop into a sinus infection. If your symptoms continue past the pollen season with yellow/green discharge, time to see the doctor.