Adventures In Pollinosis
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[Will Smith in Hitch, 2005. Even all puffed up, he still looks good. Movie star magic, I guess.]
What is pollinosis? Well, that would be the medical term for hay fever. Seasonal allergies. Allergic rhinitis. Thank you, thesaurus.com. Do I have pollinosis? Yes. Darn it. The whole shebang…itchy eyes and nose and mouth and throat, sneezing, coughing, runny nose, every single attractive symptom. How do I treat it? I’m so glad you asked. Let me give you a run down of previous attempts before I get to my current solution.
I can always medicate with various anti-histamines. If I’m desperate and it’s been a heavy allergy day (for example, I spent the day mowing my field and breathing in dust and pollen and the occasional bug), I’ll take a Benadryl. Good old-fashioned diphenhydramine. The side effect is that it does make you sleepy, so I only take it at bedtime, or when I’m at home and do not need to go anywhere. Best not to drive under the influence. But it does a superb job of handling every single symptom. You could of course try some of the more modern “non-drowsy” allergy medications, but then you are headed into more complex drug interactions and I just would prefer to stay away from anti-histamine medication altogether unless I am really desperate.
I have tried Zicam’s allergy formula. I love Zicam for treating (and pre-treating) colds, so when I saw they had an allergy formula, I tried it. It works okay but not as well as Benadryl. While it doesn’t make you sleepy, it also does nothing for itchy eyes. (You can get it here.)
And then my friend and former co-worker Cindy introduced me to essential oils, and in particular, the recipe she uses to treat her husband’s severe seasonal allergies. The oil blend works very well for everything except itchy eyes. I still need eye drops for that, something like Visine allergy eye drops (Amazon has them here). But you can use the oil blend as often as you need to and so long as you are not sensitive to any of the oils used, you won’t suffer any side effects at all. The flavor is rather strong, but you get used to it and I don’t find it unpleasant.
The recipe is so simple: equal parts of lavender, peppermint, and lemon essential oils. As it was explained to me, the lavender is soothing, so it cuts down on the itching and sneezing. The peppermint is brilliant at opening up your airways and sinuses. And the lemon has a drying effect, so it discourages a runny nose (the same way a decongestant works). I use Doterra oils, because I am quite confident about their quality and purity. I get mine directly from Doterra but if you don’t want to buy a membership, you can also get Doterra oils on Amazon.
I find that the easiest way to administer this for myself is just to take an old essential oil bottle and put in something like 50-75 drops of each of the three oils. That will probably fill your regular essential oil bottle most of the way up. If you have a smaller bottle, of course start with fewer drops. Then just put the little plug (I think it’s called an orifice reducer, but you can really go too far in using the “proper name” for things) back in the top of the bottle and shake a drop or two onto your tongue as needed for allergy symptoms. If you don’t have spare bottles or you want to mix up many bottles to give out to your sneezy friends, you could get bottles off of Amazon, of course (large 30ml bottles or some smaller 15ml bottles).
Give it a try and enjoy your medication-free allergy treatment!
