Today we continue our discussion on natural allergy treatments by looking at herbal medicine Last week we looked at acupuncture and how that is good for people with food allergies and how treatment is effective in managing allergic reactions that unfold over a few days. For most people with seasonal allergies, though, this doesn’t cut it. Symptoms come on days with high pollen counts and go away when the air is clear, so if you have seasonal allergies you can’t necessarily schedule an appointment during the middle of your day when you have an allergy attack. What are you to do then?
Chinese herbal medicine offers a good solution to this problem. As with using herbs for any other condition, a Chinese herbalist will construct a formula based on your needs for you to take on a regular basis. During allergy season this formula is likely to do a number of different things, depending on your symptom severity:
- Foremost, it will help stop allergy symptoms. Herbs can stop runny noses, post-nasal drip, red or itching eyes, cough, sinus congestion, and all the other typical allergy symptoms. Stinging nettles are one such example of an herb used for these purposes (though it needs to be combined with other herbs properly to function this way). The combination of herbs put into a formula also offsets the side effects common to allergy medications – the sleepiness or confusion common with antihistamine drugs – giving you a natural allergy solution.
- Your herbal formula will also help regulate your immune system. More than just interrupting allergy symptoms, this is a long-range approach that works to retrain the immune system and eliminate the body’s tendency to overreact and develop allergies in the first place. While it is fairly common knowledge that allergies can develop over the course of a lifetime, it is also true that they can disappear. But to do so, you have to strengthen the body’s constitution, which can take a while to do, and gets harder as you get older. So, herbs that take this approach are often combined with dietary interventions to maximize the benefit you can obtain.
- Herbs will also help to strengthen the gastrointestinal tract and regulate fluid metabolism. This goes hand-in-hand with stopping allergy symptoms. By promoting good nutrient uptake in the body, you change your body’s internal biochemistry (and with that its epigenetics), making your allergic reactions – when they do happen – less severe and frequent.
Treatment with herbal medicine is straightforward – typically you take them just like any other medication. So if you’ve been struggling and are looking for a natural allergy treatment, schedule your consultation today.
