Roughly 20 percent of adults in the US suffer from seasonal allergies. Most people reach for an over-the-counter (OTC) or prescription medication to address the runny nose, itchy/watery eyes, sinus congestion, headache and breathing difficulties they experience. This post will address how you can identify and eliminate the most likely causes of your seasonal allergies – and it’s not the pollen count.
Allergies = A sign of imbalance
Allergy symptoms are a sign that things are out of balance in the body. An allergy is basically an exaggerated reaction of your immune system. Your immune system begins to over-react to outside stimuli when it is overworked and under-rested. If the immune system is on constant alert combating food allergies, stress, toxins in the environment, and even prescription medications, it begins to lose its ability to distinguish between dangerous invaders and relatively harmless things, like pollen or dust.
When your immune system is weak, it sees seasonal allergens as foreign invaders and launches an inflammatory response, releasing chemicals like histamine to attack them. Histamines cause the sneezing, wheezing and coughing you associate with allergies; these are the mechanisms the body uses to expel the allergens. The amount of histamine your body releases depends on how compromised your immune system is. For instance, if your immune system is in good shape, your body may handle allergens without you even knowing it. If it’s not, your body may release a flood of histamine, increase the chance you’ll be downright miserable.
So how do you prevent your immune system from overreacting? Find out in the next post the first of the five triggers that could be throwing it into overdrive.
