Staying Well During Allergy Season

Take that, Seasonal Affective Disorder! Another winter of gloom and slush has come to pass and we survived.

So big were our mid-January promises to move, romp, and bask in the sunshine as soon as spring came, but if you’re anything like us, your nose is doing more running this season than anything else.

Seasonal allergies are in full swing and we’ve already shared our top supplements for the sniffles in 2024 — catch up here if you missed it. But is there anything we can do to abate the sneezes and snot besides taking a metric ton of stinging nettles every day?

We’re so glad you asked because the answer is a resounding yes. Read on to learn the whole-picture approach Dr. Neal takes to combatting seasonal allergies through lifestyle changes. AKA how you can fortify your home and body against the pollen-packed winds of spring for free. Or at least mostly free.

In This Article:

• Why a whole-picture approach is crucial
• Changes in the home to alleviate seasonal allergies
• Wellness practices for seasonal allergies

A Holistic, or Whole-Picture, Approach to Seasonal Allergies

When it comes to defending your immune system from the toxins of the wider world, things can get overwhelming — and fast. There are microplastics in our bloodstreams, hormone disruptors in our water, and now, there’s pollen in our air, too.

But don’t batten down the hatches and swear off smelling the roses just yet!

While we can’t change the world into a place that supports genuine health and well-being overnight, we can work with the environments that are within our control. Like our homes and our bodies — which you probably already know if you’ve read Dr. Neal’s industry-insider perspective on how our external environs impact our health.

We take a similar approach to seasonal allergies as we do the pollutants of our milieu:

1. Stay Educated: And up-to-date on the toxic compounds you should avoid bringing into your home and putting in your body, but don’t get your information from TikTok alone.
2. Do Your Best: To support internal wellness so your body is strong and capable of processing the things we are exposed to in the world.
3. Try Not to Freak Out: Because we have to keep living our lives, and the stress of constantly monitoring your toxin exposure isn’t great for your health, either.

For seasonal allergies, understanding the role histamine plays is crucial for making educated decisions to alleviate allergy symptoms. Doing our best (and not freaking out!) looks like making intelligent choices in our homes and health routines that can drive down histamine levels and support a healthy immune response.

That’s how we avoid missing important parts of the whole picture and stop wasting money on band-aid-esque cures that only offer temporary relief from seasonal allergy symptoms. All in one fell swoop.

Lifestyle Changes for Seasonal Allergies: Home is Where the Heart Is

Your home might protect you from social interactions and the rain, but its walls and windows aren’t impermeable. In fact, indoor air quality can sometimes be worse than that of the outdoors due to the amount of dust, debris, and dander that gets trapped in your darling abode. 

The obvious answer to this conundrum is to clean, but be careful how you’re cleaning your home. Using harsh chemical sprays that may affect your cognition or dish soaps that cause ruptures in your gut lining might be satisfying in the moment, but they’ll do more harm than good in the long run. 

Avoid any cleaning products that will add to the burden your body has to carry this spring if you want to experience true freedom from seasonal allergy symptoms. 

1. Start in the Bedroom

One of the most annoying ways seasonal allergies affect our day-to-day lives is by ruining our sleep schedules. Coughing, sneezing, and having difficulty breathing can keep us up at night, which can, in turn, weaken our immune systems. 

Reduce exposure to environmental allergens and toxins in your bedroom to reclaim your sleep and sense of well-being: 

• Add a hypoallergenic cover to your mattress to avoid breathing in the dead skin and allergens that get trapped in it night after night. 
• Sleep with your windows closed to minimize nighttime exposure to irritants.
• Change clothes and take a shower before you go to sleep to prevent daytime allergens from crawling into bed with you.

2. Clean Up Your Act

Use non-toxic products to keep the surfaces in your home clean and dust-free during allergy season, but don’t start and stop at the counters. 

Address the other surfaces in your home that could be contributing to your body’s overreaction to irritants. Think: nooks, crannies, carpets, hard-to-reach crevices, windowsills, doorframes, pets, and pet-dominated areas. 

Think those last two are a joke? They’re not! Regularly brushing, bathing, and grooming your pet can help reduce the number of irritating airborne compounds in your home this spring. So put some spa days on the calendar for your furry friends, why don’t ya? They probably deserve it.

3. Improve Air Flow, It’s Lung Overdue

Getting the dog hair out of your air conditioner will make a world of difference when you’re stuck indoors on beautiful, high-pollen count days. You can also take it a step further, if your health and wellness budget allows it, by upgrading your in-home ventilation. 

Try adding a reputable, third-party-tested air filter in the rooms you spend the most time in to improve both air flow and ventilation. But if you’re one of the 12.1 million Americans spending more than 50% of your income on rent, then let’s talk cheap houseplants. 

A few, new leafy friends probably won’t reduce airborne allergens with the same efficiency and speed as a bluetooth-compatible air-purifying space machine. However, some plants have a remarkable ability to filter out harmful compounds like mold spores. And if that pothos from the grocery store is good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for your apartment. 

Wellness Practices for Seasonal Allergies: The Body Keeps the Score

Let’s recap: Improving air quality, brushing your cats regularly, and making your bedroom into an allergen-free sanctuary will work wonders on your sneezes and sniffles. But of course, there’s still more that can be done before you jump to science-backed supplements for seasonal allergies!

Before we get into the wellness practices you can do to keep your immune system in tip-top shape, we have to look at one of the areas of our daily lives where our homes and bodies converge: stress management. 

1. De-Stress Your Mess

Don’t get us wrong, stress can wreak havoc on your quality of life all year long. It’s non-discriminatory in that way.

But particularly during peak allergy seasons, stress is like gasoline to your already burning fire of seasonal allergy symptoms and inflammation. And it’s not just because stress can disrupt your sleep, promote the growth of cancer cells, or impact your mental health.

Stress, according to recent clinical trials and research, has a direct influence on seasonal allergies. Like, literally: Perceived stress has been shown to be positively correlated with flare-ups of allergy symptoms.

If ever there was a time to limit stress-inducing media and beef up your mindfulness or meditation practices, it’s now.

Learn More: Stress Management Part 1: A Holistic Framework for Living with Stress

2. Drink Up, Baby

The relationship between moisture and seasonal allergies, however, isn’t so cut and dry.

While you want your home to be below 50% humidity during high-pollen seasons because allergens love to stick to moist surfaces, it’s the opposite for your body. Staying hydrated with high-quality, mineral-rich water can help keep your mucus membranes flushed, flourishing, and doing fine at their jobs.

Whereas a dehydrated respiratory system can be more susceptible to itching, irritation, and icky stuff. So resist the impulse to crack open a cold one this spring and, instead, go ham on the H2O.

Dr. Neal’s hydration equation goes like this: Take your body weight in pounds, cut it in half, and aim to drink that amount of water in ounces. Make sure to add an extra glass of water for every dehydrating activity you partake in too, like exercise or consuming caffeine.

3. Go Deeper

If you want to move stagnant mucus deep in the corners of your skull — and experience the bliss of relief that movement brings — you’ll have to kick your hydration up a notch. How?

With a netti pot.

This controversial device can cleanse and rehydrate the innermost passageways of our sinuses, clearing built-up junk and giving us a fresh start. When followed by yogic positions that also encourage the movement of trapped mucus, like downward dog, a regular neti pot routine could just save your life this spring.

But don’t forget: You need to have the proper temperature and salt-to-water ratio of the liquid you pour through your nose if you want to avoid agitating your sinuses further. There are like, a bazillion YouTube videos available on how to do a neti pot flush correctly, so don’t dive in blind!

Seasons Change, So Should You

To boil it all down: Seasonal allergies suck, but they don’t have to ruin all the fun this spring.

Once you’ve locked into your seasonally appropriate wellness practices and are living with the cycles of life rather than against them, you too can bloom.

Plus, you can circle back to our highly recommended supplements for seasonal allergies to help stop stubborn symptoms in their tracks. Or chat with one of our supplement strategists to find the formula that will work best for you and your sniffles specifically — our Counterside Consults are always open and always free.