Allergy season is a horrible time of year. Here in the Midwest, if you want to find
someone who suffers with seasonal allergies all you have to do is throw a
rock. You’ll hit one. Actually, it’s likely that the rock you threw
will hit another allergy sufferer on the ricochet. It’s sort of normal around here. Well…not normal. It’s prevalent. I even remember as a kid taking allergy
medicine. I didn’t have my own. My mom had a prescription allergy medication
and I would take that. After all, what
harm could come from taking someone else’s prescription?
So clearly I haven’t always made the best health care
choices. But thankfully things are
different for me as an adult. I can’t
remember the last time I took allergy medication. It had to have been more than 10 years
ago. Actually, I can’t remember the last
time I took any sort of anti-histamine.
And my new found lack of allergies has nothing to do with some sort of
quest to find the missing pieces to the allergy puzzle. It has everything to do with the fact that I
started doing things that would help my immune system function at it’s peak.
You see, a runny nose or watery eyes aren’t necessarily bad
things. Even when the body creates all
sorts of gross mucus you can’t just jump to the conclusion that something is
wrong. Histamine reactions (ie: runny nose,
watery eyes, drainage) are just your body’s way of protecting itself. If your body determines that something you
are breathing in is dangerous to your body, then your immune system reacts to
it. That’s what it is supposed to
do. That’s the way we were created. The problem isn’t what your body is
doing. The problem is WHEN your body is
doing it.
If your body is over-reacting, that’s not a good thing. If your body reacts to every speck of dust or
sliver of fresh cut grass like it’s a health terrorist that is coming to
destroy your wellbeing, you end up living your entire life with a stuffed up
sinuses and watery eyes. NO FUN. But if your body realizes that most of the time
dust and fresh cut grass are not anything to react to, then you are considered
to be one of the “lucky ones” that don’t suffer with allergy problems.
So the key to going from suffering with allergies and not
suffering with allergies (or at least suffering less) is to build up your
immune system. Your immune system is
like a muscle. It can be strong or it
can be weak. And there are a lot of ways
to strengthen your immune system. Most
of them are going to involve dietary and lifestyle changes. Most people don’t want to hear that, but it’s
true.
The thing that helped me the most was an area where allergy
improvement was most unexpected. It was
after I became an Upper Cervical patient.
I didn’t start care with the intent to improve my allergies. It never even dawned on me that it was
possible that Upper Cervical could help. I have since learned that my experience is not
that uncommon. One of the most common
“unexpected” benefits of Upper Cervical care is an improvement in allergy and
sinus problems. I refer to it as an
“unexpected” benefit because we have a lot of patients that, like me, started
care for some other reason and the allergy and sinus improvement was a bonus to
care.
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