Advice for Allergy "Season"

Your Nose is Running…Better Go Catch It!

by Dr. Jerry Kennedy

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.

Technically, Upper Cervical Care isn’t a treatment for allergy and sinus problems.  Upper Cervical is designed to correct misalignments in the upper neck that are causing irritation to the nervous system.  Because the nervous system and the immune system are so closely related, when a patient takes the stress off their nervous system through Upper Cervical Care, they consequently will have less stress to their immune system.  Less stress on the immune system means it becomes stronger and functions properly.  One thing leads to another…yada, yada, yada…and you may just end up living an allergy free life.  That is of course if you are willing to try something different.

Reducing Health Care Costs With Upper Cervical Care

(Editor's note: This is from a blog that I came across the other day and I really enjoyed a recent post on it. There is an excerpt below but you can read the full article here.)

Top 5 Ways to Reduce Health Care Costs

By healthbymom

1. Lose Weight. 5 lbs. Can you start with losing 5 lbs? Just taking 5 lbs. of body weight off of your frame will improve your health. It is no surprise to read literature stating that obesity doubles or even triples health care costs. This is why companies are always encouraging weight loss! It is cheaper for them to insure people of a healthy weight. Why? Because people of a healthy weight are….generally…HEALTHIER! Reducing your weight will reduce your health care costs. Let me give you one example why. In just ONE POUND of fat, there are approximately 0.3 miles of blood vessels. This is why overweight people have high blood pressure. The heart has to work overtime and overpressure to get the blood pumped through all of that extra mileage. (It only takes 3.5 extra pounds of fat to have an entire MILE of blood vessels! – WOW!)

2. Move More! (Exercise). Clearly, this goes with the above. But most of us live relatively sedentary lives and without a conscious effort, we wouldn’t move more than just our fingers on a keyboard all day. Research (Medica and Life Time Fitness 2007) shows that people who received a financial incentive to exercise regularly saw an average claim cost decrease of more than 33% per member, per month. This research was based on those people exercising only an average of EIGHT days per month! Just EIGHT days! Moving their bodies on 8 out of 30 days resulted in 64.3% decrease in facility claims. They were healthier! And they were paying LESS to health care because of it.

3. Drink More Water! The body is composed of 55-75% water. And we are in need of CONSTANT water replenishment. Your health depends on water. Those energy cycles you were forced to learn in chemistry class are dependent on water. Water is needed to move the blood, to flush the liver toxins, to digest foods, to move the bowel, to sweat, to breathe…the list goes on and on. Water loss of only 1 – 2% can make you feel tired and zap you of your energy. Any more than that and you will start losing normal body functions. Perhaps your blood pressure will go up because your blood is thicker than it should be. Or you will be constipated because you don’t have enough hydration to move the bowels appropriately. So how much water should you drink a day? There are many different “rules”. Some people like the 8oz. of water 8 times a day rule. That one is just fine if you stick to it. I try to drink half my body weight in oz. per day. So, hypothetically, I weigh 120lbs (which I don’t). I would have to drink 60 oz of water in a day. It works. Sure, your bladder will have to get used to it. But once you stop worrying about those trips to the bathroom – you will notice that your energy is better, your attitude is better, and you just feel better all around.

4. Stop eating foods you cannot pronounce. Here’s a task for you. The next time you sit down with a bag or a package of some “food”, get on your favorite search engine (bing, google, yahoo…) and type in the ingredients one by one. I can almost guarantee that those long names you see on that package will have reported detrimental effects. They are cancer-causing, tumor-forming, and DNA-mutilating. Check out this article. It is a little dated, but not much has changed I promise you that.

So what should you do? Shop on the OUTSIDE aisles of the grocery store. Stick to fresh produce and meats whenever possible. Don’t go through that drive-through. Make changes for you, for your health, and for your family’s health. This type of change will pay you back in large dividends.

5. Last but certainly not least, seek out alternatives in health care. My personal #1 choice is upper cervical care. Insurance does not always cover it, that is true. But paying cash, out of pocket, is completely worthwhile to many families. Why? They get well from a wide variety of illnesses that they are no longer paying co-pays for repeat visits to the pediatrician or family physician; they are no longer paying for prescription medications or even over the counter medications; they aren’t missing work days to stay home with sick kids. They just aren’t! We see this over and over and over again. If you haven’t heard of upper cervical care, check out these two sites:

drjerrykennedy.com and uppercervicalcare.com