Allergies are all too common. Millions of Americans experience allergies every day, whether it’s a seasonal allergy or a sensitivity to pet dander. The symptoms can quickly become irritating, at best, throwing a wrench into your plans by making you feel miserable. Thankfully, there are plenty of treatments and medicines that can help.
While common treatments, such as corticosteroids or antihistamines, can help, they only offer short-term relief. Plus, they’re not a top pick for those who prefer a natural approach. But do natural allergy medicines actually work? They can, but it depends on which one you choose.
Understanding Allergies and Common Treatments
Before we explore the specifics of natural allergy medicine and its prowess in alleviating allergy symptoms, we need to understand the basics of an allergy. At a glance, an allergy is simply your body’s reaction to a foreign substance, called an allergen, that it deems harmful.
Your body naturally produces antibodies, blood proteins that counteract a specific antigen. Sometimes, those antibodies recognize a substance as harmful, even if it isn’t. It might send warning signals when you’re exposed to pet dander, bee venom, or a similar allergen.
Those antibodies communicate with cells that release specific chemicals, resulting in the symptoms you recognize as an allergic reaction. You might experience symptoms ranging from mild to severe, such as a runny nose, itchy throat, scratchy eyes, sneezing, or even difficulty breathing.
Luckily, there are plenty of treatments designed to provide relief from those symptoms. Common modern-day treatments include:
- Antihistamines: These medications block the action of histamine, which is produced in the body during an allergic reaction. This helps relieve common allergy symptoms, including sneezing, itching, and runny noses.
- Corticosteroids: These anti-inflammatory medications offer relief from allergy symptoms by reducing inflammation in the airways and nasal passages.
- Decongestants: These constrict the blood vessels of the nasal passages to help alleviate nasal congestion, a common symptom of allergies.
Unfortunately, while effective, these treatments are only temporary solutions to the problem. Eventually, their effects wear off, sending you straight back to square one.
Natural Allergy Medicine: Explained
People have been dealing with the woes of allergies for centuries. Some of the earliest documented cases date back to ancient Greek and Roman history! In the time since, healthcare professionals and researchers have searched for solutions, compiling an assortment of natural allergy medicines that may help reduce irritating symptoms.
Modern-day allergy treatments didn’t become an option until more recently, but even with them, many people still opt for natural allergy medicines to find relief. A few common types of natural allergy medicine include:
- Quercetin: This is a natural antioxidant found in various plant foods, including apples, green teas, and onions. It may help reduce allergy symptoms.
- Probiotics: These have been used to reduce the severity of allergic reactions, although results may vary.
- Butterbur: This herbal supplement has historically been used to treat migraines and allergies.
- Sinus flushing devices: These devices help reduce nasal congestion and allergy symptoms by flushing the sinuses with a saltwater solution.
- Immunotherapy: This treatment uses tiny doses of the allergen to “train” your body to be less sensitive to it. This, in turn, reduces allergic reactions over time.
Some of these treatments offer short-term relief, much like common modern-day treatments, while others serve as long-term solutions. Allergy immunotherapy is a standout option in the mix for that very reason—it’s a promising solution that offers long-term relief from irritating allergies.
Exploring Allergy Immunotherapy: A Promising Long-Term Solution
Allergy immunotherapy is a promising option in natural allergy medicine. It harnesses the power of your immune system and minuscule doses of the allergen to help you find long-term relief from your allergies.
It’s a treatment that focuses on “training” your immune system to become less reactive to a particular allergen. It achieves this result by slowly reducing the production of the “blocking” antibodies that trigger the reaction.
The treatment uses small, incrementally increasing doses of the allergen to slowly desensitize your body to the allergen and limit that antibody production. The doses slowly increase over months and years, giving your immune system the opportunity to build tolerance.
The transformation doesn’t happen overnight—it takes years to achieve an allergen-specific tolerance. For most, it takes anywhere from two to three years to see the best results, although some may need to continue the treatment indefinitely to preserve the results.
With time, it can effectively reduce your sensitivity to the allergen. In some cases, it might even allow you to enjoy places and experiences you previously couldn’t. For example, after treatment, you might be able to hang out with dogs again without having debilitating symptoms.
Does Allergy Immunotherapy Actually Work?
This might be the first time you’ve heard of allergy immunotherapy, but it’s nothing new. It’s been around since 1911 when Leonard Noon and John Freeman introduced it as allergen desensitization or hypo-sensitization. Since then, the treatment has been picked apart and examined from every angle by countless researchers and healthcare professionals.
Today, you can find hundreds of studies and trials that demonstrate its remarkable efficacy. For example, there is a handful of research and clinical trials that evaluated allergy immunotherapy, specifically subcutaneous immunotherapy (allergy shots), in achieving an allergen-specific tolerance. It found that the treatment did, indeed, achieve an allergen-specific tolerance that lasted for years beyond discontinuation.
Another study compared AIT-treated people to a control group. It found that the treated group had a much higher chance of stepping down asthma treatment and was constantly associated with more significant reductions in allergic rhinitis and asthma prescriptions than the control group.
These are just two of the many studies and trials that showcase the incredible power of allergy immunotherapy as a natural allergy medicine. If you’re interested in learning more about this treatment or its effect on certain allergens, there’s no shortage of reading material readily available online and in many health books.
Wrapping Up
Natural allergy medicines, including allergy immunotherapy, can be excellent alternatives to common modern-day medicines that offer temporary relief. Of course, it’s important to remember that the results may vary with natural allergy medicines, and some may only provide short-term relief. If you’re looking for a long-term option, allergy immunotherapy might be a good fit.
Allergy immunotherapy can help desensitize your body to a particular allergen, offering long-term relief from your allergies. That said, as with any new treatment, it’s important to chat with your primary healthcare physician before beginning immunotherapy. They can help you select the best solution for your needs.
