Jan 2012 There are enough pharmaceutical hay fever remedies around to sink all the ships a person could imagine.

How about natural hay fever cures, though? What are they, where do you get ‘em – and do any of them actually work? We sent our correspondent deep into the jungles of cyberspace to find out...

The first thing to remember is that there are no natural remedies for hay fever that are guaranteed to work. Like all the other treatments, natural nay fever remedies are really trying to work on a variety of different allergies rather than a specific “illness” – hay fever is actually a catchall term that covers hundreds of distinct allergies to airborne pollens, which makes hay fever medicine a rather hit and miss process. That said, there are several natural hay fever cures (we use “cures” advisedly; one might better say “alleviators”) that seem to have gained some popular currency in the last few years. They are:

Butterbur, first. This rather wonderfully named plant has been claimed to be a kind of natural antihistamine. The good news – it grows in abundance all over Europe. The bad news – if your body doesn’t like the stuff, you’re in for a rough ride that could involve diarrhoea, vomiting, fatigue and extreme headaches. And you should definitely check with your doctor first – certain renal complaints will prevent you taking this natural hay fever cures’ extracts.

What else, then? Well, “medically” speaking (i.e., in terms of an actual naturally occurring substance that you can ingest to try and ameliorate hay fever): that’s your lot. However. There’s been a bunch of research done on the ways in which certain food components (you know the stuff, omega 3 oils and whatnot) either do, or don’t have an effect on one’s predisposition for hay fever. This is probably where the best bets lie, in terms of natural hay fever cures – prevention is well known to be better than cure, and if eating or not eating certain things can help, then have at it.

So what helps? Carrots, apparently, which rather appropriately contain carotenoids. That would be beta caroteine and co, to thee and me: funky little bits of good that seem to pop up in anything orange or green. So: pumpkin (yum); butternut squash (ditto); spinach (makes you strong, too); curly kale; and, of course, carrots. Also the seeds, where edible, of the above. Apparently, carotenoids prevent inflammation in the nose and throat – which is a fancy roundabout medical way of saying that if you don’t eat them, you’re more likely to get blocked air passages. So eat them, and you’ll be one step further along the road to finding some natural hay fever cures that actually work.

Like a lot of things, the prevention of hay fever through diet really just boils down to eating good food regularly. Ditch the packet stuff and get in some green and orange veg. Or you could try acupuncture. Though given a choice between being stuck full of needles and eating pumpkin pie, one doubts many would choose the former...

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