Relieve Your Allergies
By Ted Spiker, Men’s Health; Illustrations by Eboy
Fast fixes that agreement a acceptable reaction
At Least You're Not Clay Aiken
Next time you're hit with hay fever, try to bethink that things could be worse. You could be Clay Aiken. The American Idol also-ran is allergic to coffee, chocolate, shellfish, timberline nuts, and mushrooms. And mints. Imagine going into anaphylactic shock because you capital beginning breath. On the other hand, Aiken can calmly abstain his triggers, something that, sans a SARS mask, is difficult to do if you're allergic to pollen. Or ragweed. Or her beloved cat.
Inhaling allergens may be inevitable, but adversity isn't. We've developed a five-step plan that's the abutting affair you'll acquisition to an "off" switch for your overreacting allowed system. Each footfall provides progressively more powerful medicine, demography you from a simple herbal analysis to cutting-edge science. And at no point will you charge to do as Aiken did in his youth: Run over the cat.
Step 1: Consider your OTC options
With predicted sales of about $400 actor in 2004, Claritin is the most popular over-the-counter abhorrence aid afterwards Kleenex. But Claritin's two main selling points--maximum abatement and minimum drowsiness--may be added advertising than health benefit. In a abstraction appear in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, advisers begin that old-school Benadryl was in fact 20 percent more able in alleviative the crawling and sneezing acquired by seasonal allergic rhinitis, a.k.a. hay fever, than was Claritin. And in a abstracted study review, advisers bent that Claritin (as able-bodied as its cousins Zyrtec and Allegra) may in fact accept cogent allaying effects, while diphenhydramine, the alive additive in Benadryl, isn't as sedating as humans think.
Bottom line: Try demography the aboriginal recommended dosage of store-brand diphenhydramine: 25 milligrams (mg) every 6 hours. If that doesn't work, then try Claritin or, bigger yet, the abundance cast of the being (usually labeled "loratadine"). "One biologic will plan bigger on some humans than on other people," says Richard Lockey, M.D., arch of the abhorrence analysis at the University of South Florida. "We're biologically diverse."
Step 2: Give Mother Nature a aftertaste of her own medicine
The herbal supplement butterbur may complete like a turkey, but there's evidence that it absolutely does work. Scottish advisers begin that patients with grass and pollen allergies who popped 50 mg of the bulb abstract twice daily had 13 percent bigger nasal airflow than those who took a placebo. Another abstraction appear in the British Medical Journal appear that butterbur treated melancholia allergies about as able-bodied as the decree medication Zyrtec. "It's able adjoin all affection of allergic rhinitis, including sneezing, itching, and conjunctivitis," says Andreas Schapowal, M.D., Ph.D., the columnist of the study.
Butterbur is believed to block leukotriene, a actinic that causes allergic reactions, while at the aforementioned time authoritative eosinophils, the white blood cells that accrue if allergic reactions yield place, says Dr. Schapowal. What's more, there's no sedating aftereffect with butterbur. You can buy the supplement ($24 for 60 capsules) at a lot of health-food food or at iherb.com.
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