Every allergy sufferer wishes nothing more than relief from the arduous symptoms their triggers cause. While there is no cure as of yet, there are many ways to tame your allergies. However, the most important step is know what allergies are and educate yourself on what trips your triggers.

What Are Allergies?

When your body comes in contact with a foreign substance, it can trigger a damaging immune system response, causing your body to become hypersensitive to the substance. Pollen, fur, pet dander, food, soap, dust, and so many other things can trigger your immune system to react. It can be challenging to narrow down what is causing you to sneeze, itch your eyes, or just feel like you have a sinus headache all day long, but you must, one step at a time.

The most common causes of allergies are drugs (medications), food, contact dermatitis, latex, allergy asthma, seasonal allergies, animal allergies, and mold. If you are investigating what is affecting you, start with the more common ones and try eliminating one thing for one week at a time. If you do more than one, you will not be narrowing down your triggers.

If you have tried to find out what your allergies are on your own, but have been unsuccessful, we recommend you visit your doctor and get an allergy test. This way, if you have any oddball allergies, they can be identified and, if need be, you can get a prescription.

Taming Triggers

Even if you have a prescription from your doctor, you can still take action at home, work, and outdoors to ensure you are reducing your contact with allergens. Some ways you can reduce your exposure are:

Keep doors and windows closed and use your air conditioning system if you have it. We recommend an allergy filter for your window units. For central air conditioning systems, change your intake vent filters once a month. This is especially important if you have pets.

Outdoor activities such as gardening or exercising should be done when pollen counts are low. An interesting tidbit is that trees and weeds tend to release pollen in the morning, while grasses discharge pollen in the morning and at night time. If you have to do heavy yard work like mowing the lawn or hedge trimming, where you will have a lot of pollen kicked up into the air, wear a mask.

After any outdoor activities, take a shower and throw your clothes in the wash, using an allergy reducing detergent. There are special personal care soaps and creams that can help soothe any skin reactions you may have to allergies, and also are allergy free themselves. The less you run around covered in pollen and other allergy triggers, the better off you will be.

Ideally, if you can spend at least eight hours allergy free, like when you are sleeping, it will do wonders for your symptoms. Create a sanctuary in your bedroom, free from allergens. Keeping your bedroom meticulously clean, dedicating an air purifier to the room, and only keeping clean, freshly laundered clothes in there will help tremendously.  Use various types of allergen protection bedding to keep dust mites and other unseen allergy triggers at bay. From mattresses to pillows and duvet covers, you can allergy proof your bedroom with ease.

Boost your immune system! Allergies are essentially your immune system being hypersensitive to triggers. Load your diet with omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, and vitamin C to help increase your immune system strength. Incorporating local honey into your diet can decrease your allergies naturally, since the pollen from the flora in your region is in the honey in very small quantities. Slowly, over time, you can even eliminate your allergies through this method.

Instead of walking around holding your head with a tissue in hand, take control of your allergy symptoms and be creative in the ways you treat them. You don’t always have to take medication for them, as there are many other avenues to pursue, from creating an allergy-free home to all natural remedies that can take the edge off your immune system reactions. While there may not be a cure for all the allergies in the world, you can work toward reducing your contact to the allergens and live a fuller life for it.