Get Rid of Your Allergies

Earlier this week I talked about allergies and their causes.  I wanted to add a note about bronchitis before we talk more about treatments. While allergies certainly cause a good deal of discomfort in the nasal passages, they can also be the cause of many cases of bronchitis.  Everything I said about the nose and nasal passages relates to the lining of the lungs and the bronchi, too.  Even though your nose filters out a lot of those particles of pollen, a lot of them still do get down into the bronchi and lungs and they land there.  The same response is going on in the lungs that is going on in the nose (which you can read about in the last post) except your lungs have all these little hair-like fibers that brush the mucous and pollen up toward the throat when you, for lack of a nicer way to describe it, hock it up and clear your throat to spit it out. 

What are some treatments for allergies? Standard medical treatment relates first of all to making a proper diagnosis of whether it’s an infection or whether it’s allergy.  The common practice is to treat bacterial infections with antibiotics even though that may not always be prudent or wise.  That’s frequently what’s done.  We probably need to reserve antibiotics for more severe conditions, longer-term bronchitis, or even pneumonia and let the body heal itself in most of the other instances.  If the white blood count does show that it is allergic or if the doctor’s clinical examination wisdom along with your history provide that information, that’s good. 

After that, the standard medical treatment are anti-histamines and steroids.  Steroids have gotten a pretty bad name because of the medical steroids that we use, the artificial steroids.  If I’m ever going to put a patient on steroids, I like to use what the human body makes and that is cortisol or hydrocortisone.  That can be used with relative safety and impunity especially for short periods of time as opposed to the artificial steroids.  As long as we can use a very, very identical thing to what the body is making usually we don’t get into a whole lot of trouble.  

There are some good homeopathics for allergies.  You may want to consult a good homeopath because there are some practical homeopathics.  Some beneficial supplements include Vitamin C, which has been known to help allergies and allergy-related issues, as well as bioflavonoids.  If you are having allergic reactions you should probably avoid aspirin and ibuprofen and drugs like that.  Of course you want to avoid cigarette smoke and things like that which are very irritating to the bronchi and sinuses.

You should consider the possibility of keeping your windows closed and using good air filtration.  If you don’t have a central furnace you might want to consider a room HEPA filter.  Frankly, the more you pay for those filters, or the finer particle it filters, probably the better you are.  Live plants in the house can help filter some things.  There is a caveat there.  Sometimes if you are watering them too much you can grow your own mold and mildew and create your own problems.  A word of caution there.

It is interesting to note, medically, that people with a bacteria in their stomach (helicobacter pylori) have a significant association with allergies.  In other words if you take 1000 patients with seasonal allergies (rhinitis, bronchitis, sinusitis) and test them for helicobacter pylori a dramatically more significant percentage of those will have that bacteria than if you just test a random population without any sinus problems.  That bacteria is associated with allergies for whatever reason.  We don’t know that connection.

Other natural things that can be used are echinacea, golden seal, and bromelain.  One very practical thing to do is good old saline nasal spray.  Just washing those allergens off of the membranes in your nasal passages can have a significant benefit.  If you’ve been outside a good thing to do is take a shower before going to bed.  Your hair is a great pollen magnet.  You lay that on your pillow and rub your nose in it as you go along in your sleep.  Those are just some practical things to do.

Finally, as I mentioned last post, stress reduction and stress avoidance is the most significant thing that we can do.  Any overflow of stress can exacerbate allergies and cause them to manifest.