Alternative allergy treatment - I need advice

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the problem - I’ve had allergies, bad ones, since I was a year old. Specifically, I react to dust, mold, ragweed, grass, and trees (oak, birch, elm). I’ve been on injections since age 5 to treat them. They help, but so far they haven’t eliminated any of my allergies. I’ve tried every antihistamnine on the market (I am not exaggerating here), and they’ve only given minimal relief. I also have athsma that is triggered by the allergies.

To put it simply, I’ve never known what it’s like to breathe and smell things normally and I’m goddamn sick and tired of it. I want something that will work.

Are there any natural/holistic treatments out there that will eliminate allergies? Has anyone here tried anything that they had luck with?

Also, I was talking to a lady at work (who I think may be a bit crazy, but I’m not sure) who claims that people with allergies will eventually get cancer because their immune systems are always compromised. Is there any truth to what she says, or is she a nutjob?

2

Well for the pollen allergies try some local raw honey. I got into beekeeping a few years ago with my wife. And honey obtained from local beekeepers will have small amounts of the stuff that gives you problems and allow your body to build up a tolerance to these substances [see iocane powder :slight_smile: ]. There are all sorts of reputed medicinal substances that come from a bee hive. Try looking up local beekeepers and ask around. Usually in a group/club/hive of beekeepers there will be someone knowledgable about such matters.

I do know it has to be honey gathered locally so it has the same stuff you are reacting to, and raw – pasturizing defeats these effects.

-rainy

3

Well, I already get shots for all the pollens I’m allergic to…the honey method you mention is basically the same idea of immunotherapy, just in a different form.
I’m looking for a different kind of treatment, because although immunotherapy helps me, it has done nothing to actually eliminate my allergies.

4

My sister has very similar allergies and she found that when she stopped the shots, she simply felt better. She changes the filter on the furnace/air every two weeks, encases all bedclothes in special coverings, and does other standard anti-allergy things.

One obvious thing that she refuses to do but you might try: I’ve heard that washing your hair at night means a cleaner environment for sleeping. Your hair picks up all the allergens throughout the day, and you carry them with you and spread them on your pillow.

5

I have an air filter and hypoallergenic mattress and pillow covers. I also shower before bed, but all this only provides minimal relief.

I tried stopping shots a couple times, and life became an absolute misery. My throat was constantly raw and sore, my eyes were watery slits, I sneezed so much that the skin around my nostrils bled and peeled from constant blowing. So the shots do help to make life bearable, as I mentioned - they just aren’t acting as a cure, only a treatment.

6

Drat. I got nothin’. Sorry. I hope someone can offer something better than my pitiful lameness!

7

All commercially available honey is raw. I’ve never heard of pasteurized honey. That’s why we’re advised not to give honey to newborns.

8

The most common brand sold in stores where I am (Billy Bee Honey) states on the label that it is pasteurized.

9

I know what I’m about to say probably isn’t going to be received well here, and to be honest I really hesitated to post this at all, but I understand what Amazon Floozy Goddess is going through, and thought it would be wrong of me not to offer my experience. I just ask readers to keep an open mind and don’t flame the fuck out of me for offering this information.

I had this very problem with allergies for many years. My nostrils often felt plugged up, and I felt congested all the time. This resulted in difficulties sleeping, resticted airflow, lots of mucus, and maybe even made me a lot more cranky than I should have been. I went through a number of medical treatments and drugs, but nothing really worked.

One day, during my morning meditation, when I was feeling congested as usual, I was just getting so frustrated. At that moment, I just asked/prayed [to God] for this problem to go away. Within moments, my nasal passage cleared up, and I felt like I could breathe clearly. Amazingly, from that day I’ve never had these allergy problems again! Believe me, I’m as surprised as anyone.

Is it God helping me or was it some kind of psychosomatic reaction involving my subconscious mind? I really don’t know, but whatever it was, all I can say is that this is what I did and it helped me. Take it for what it’s worth. Good luck, Amazon.

10

I have also had pretty bad hayfever for a long, long time. When I was a kid, allergy shots worked well for me, but I stopped when I went to college. I tried accupuncture for a bit, and in my experience, it worked fairly well, but not great.

I then came across the steroid nasal sprays that worked very well for me, and now I have gone back to allergy shots, which are working great.

All that being said, some claim success with accupuncture. If you are desperate (and it sounds like you are) you might want to try that.

And my whole family has hay fever-like allergies, and none of them have had cancer of any sort. Alzheimers, high blood pressure, and cataracts, yes, but no cancer at all.

11

I’m confused. You say that you want an alternative treatment, but you also say you want something that works. An alternative treatment is, by definition, one that nobody knows whether it works. Are we supposed to just offer wild guesses? If that’s the case, I might recommend soaking your feet in water from the Dead Sea, saying “bananna nanna fo fanna” each month at the third quarter moon, and tickling yourself underneath your left ear every Thursday at 7:23 PM. Hey, it can’t hurt!

12

Well, someone will know if an alternative treatment works or not if they’ve tried it. That’s what I’m trying to get, is opinions from those who have been on natural/holistic remedies and can offer some info on what it’s done for them.
From your sarcasm, I can tell you’ve never suffered with anything like this. Imagine having a sinus infection and bronchitis every day of your entire life. I’m not kidding, it really is that bad. People always ask me if I have the flu because I look and sound sick all the time. So please don’t joke about it.

13

Andrew Weil has a few suggestions here He’s open to alternative treatments without being too out there.

14

I used to have baaaaaad allergies, just like yours sound like (plus cats). Especially the

part.

I never bothered with shots because of the expense and hassle involved, and I gave up on allergy pills years ago when I got sick of being slow-witted and dehydrated on top of being sneezy and headachey.

Now, I rarely have any problems at all (except cats, the little buggers).

First I tried acupuncture, which worked a bit, but I couldn’t continue the treatment because I had to move.

Last year I got completely fed up with my hay fever and went to a naturopath. She told me that it was all related to diet, blah blah blah, and I gave up dairy and citrus on her advice (and also started eating more whole grains). She told me meat also exacerbates allergies (but I’m already vegetarian so I didn’t have to give that up too).

HUUUUUGE improvement. (Except, as I mentioned, to cats.) I soon realized I love cheese too much to give up, so I started eating it again with as much gusto as ever (but no other dairy except the very occasional yogurt), and honestly, if I eat too much cheese my nose starts clogging up. A friend of mine told me he had allergies until he gave up dairy, too.

(I don’t miss citrus nearly as much as I thought I would, I just replaced all the orange juice in my diet with mango, which was really a bonus.)

Please try it. I know it’s hard, but try giving up all dairy for a little while and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn’t, then all you’ve lost is a few weeks of cheese and ice cream - but if it does, well, you will have to decide if it’s worth it. Just try it.

15

from here

http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=1648

Quote;
“In the bulk honey industry where moisture levels in extracted honey are often higher than naturally ripened honey and where packers want their product to remain liquid for a long period of time, pasteurization is a necessity.”

But you still shouldn’t give it to babies;
“Pasteurization in the honey industry is a process that kills sugar tolerant yeasts in order to extend the shelf life. The heating process is not high enough to break the tough coat of a botulism spore.”

-rainy

16

I’ve heard about giving up dairy - I think I’ll try that for awhile. I like soy milk/cheese, etc. So I’m sure I could live on it for a bit.

Re: Acupuncture - I’m intrigued, is it very expensive? Do most (or any) health plans cover it?

17

If anyone else had posted what Chronos did, they’d probably get slapped by the mods and told to keep their sarcasm out of GQ. You understand his point, but he’s obviously wrong that “alternative” equates with “no one knows whether it works”. Alternative methods just haven’t passed rigorous testing, which frequently means bogus but may also means the treatment has benefits for some but not others and is seen as unreliable by Western medicine. Just because a treatment isn’t consistently effective across a broad sample doesn’t mean it has zero benefit for each individual in that sample.

I have cat allergies and for a while I was unavoidably exposed to cats on a daily basis. Filters and cleaning didn’t help because I didn’t control the cat’s environment. I took a homeopathic remedy that was recommended by a health food store and it was extremely effective as long as I took it daily. I’m typically very skeptical about unscientific treatements but, like you, I was at the point of being willing to try. For all I know, the benefits I saw were a placebo effect, but it worked.

It’s been years since I took this stuff and don’t remember the name or ingredients, but you might check with a health food store. A lot of people that push homeopathic remedies are so flaky you can’t even talk to them without getting off into crystal and pyramid energy[sup]*[/sup] but you might find someone helpful at a health food store that isn’t wholly vested in homeopathy.

[sup]* Yes Chronos, I realize I’m picking and choosing which unscientific methods to remain skeptical about with little rhyme or reason. I’m a scientist too. I’m just not close-minded enough to ignore effects I’ve seen demonstrated. I’m not trying to prove their efficacy to others, but it worked on me in my circumstances.[/sup]

18

Let me know how it turns out. I might have just gotten lucky but I think it really makes a difference.

It depends on your area. Here it’s not regulated so I could call myself an acupuncturist, hang up a shingle and charge you $10 or $1000 for an hour if I wanted.

I think some private health plans cover it (Canada’s public health system doesn’t). I went to the student clinic at the Toronto School of Traditional Chinese Medicine (around $80/session, IIRC, which is cheaper than the students charged once they graduated). They were great, but you had to keep going back (my allergies got better, but they got worse again when I stopped going) and as a rule I don’t like ongoing treatments as much as fixing whatever’s causing the problem.

The acupuncture was really neat, though, if you haven’t tried it. Very relaxing after you get over the initial oddness. I’d certainly try it again if I had any chronic health troubles.

19

Actually, yes, I did once have strong respiratory allergies. In time, they fortunately just mostly went away on their own, as allergies sometimes do. Which brings me to my next point: No, somebody wouldn’t know whether a particular treatment would work or not, just because they’ve used it. Suppose someone did use the Dead Sea/moon/tickling method I mentioned, and their allergies went away. Does that mean it works? Maybe. Or maybe it means the allergies just went away on their own. If you were to take a thousand folks with similar allergies, and have five hundred of them all undergo that treatment, while the other five hundred did nothing, and if the five hundred who did had a significantly higher rate of relief, then you would have a pretty good idea that it worked. But if you did that, and it worked, it would cease to be alternative medicine.

Alternative medicine is not just “medicine which works for some but not for others”. There’re plenty of examples of that in conventional, accepted medicine. In some cases, they know whom it works for, and only prescribe it for those folks, and in some cases, they don’t know, so they prescribe it and watch what happens. If it has beneficial effects on anybody, a well-designed study will show that, and the medical community will accept it, for those folks.

20

AFG, have you had a skin test recently? I’m clutching at straws, but allergies can change. Is it possible you’re allergic to something the shots aren’t dealing with?

Food allergies were included in the testing my sister had done. I’m assuming that’s standard.