Complaints & connections · borters.ch
The immune system mistakes pollen for an attacker — unpleasant but very treatable, and treatment also protects the bronchi.
Also known as: allergic rhinitis
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
The immune system files a harmless protein from pollen, dust mites or animal hair as an attacker and makes antibodies against it. At every further contact, mast cells in the nasal lining release histamine — hence the sneezing, the running nose, the itching eyes. Two things are regularly underrated. First the exhaustion: a blocked nose disturbs sleep, and daytime tiredness often comes less from the medicine than from the bad night. Second the path downward. Untreated hay fever raises the chance that the bronchi later join in and asthma develops — the allergic march. Treating is therefore not merely a question of comfort. Antihistamines work against sneezing and itching; against a blocked nose, steroid nasal sprays do better, but they need a few days and belong taken regularly, not on demand. Decongestant sprays help briefly and within a few days become a problem of their own, because the lining gets used to them. The only treatment that addresses the cause is desensitisation, over years.
Steroid sprays need several days to work. Taken only on bad days they feel useless.
After about a week the lining adapts and swells more without the spray. The help becomes the cause.
Pollen sits in the hair and otherwise lands on the pillow all night. Drying laundry indoors during the season goes with it.
The only one that addresses the cause, it runs three years and is most worthwhile when few triggers are known and the symptoms are large.
For dust mites, covers for mattress and pillow do most. Expensive whole-home overhauls rarely do.
Wash your hair in the evening, do not leave day clothes in the bedroom, windows closed during the day, air briefly at night.
Nine grams of salt to a litre of boiled and cooled water, rinse once or twice daily with a pot or nasal douche.
Antihistamines occupy the receptor histamine acts on; steroid sprays lower the inflammation in the nose. Both suppress the reaction for as long as they are taken. What makes the immune system itself relearn is desensitisation — over three to five years.
About twenty to thirty in a hundred people are affected, and the trend is rising. The complaints follow the pollen: hazel and alder from January, birch March to May, grasses May to July, mugwort and ragweed in late summer. The cortisone nasal spray needs three to seven days for full effect and works better if started one to two weeks before the season. Desensitisation takes three years and goes on working for years afterwards.
Salt water rinses pollen and secretions away and keeps the lining moist. Forceful blowing on both sides pushes secretions into the sinuses and the ear.
Clear and watery, not yellowish. Coloured mucus with a fever points to infection rather than allergy.
Itching eyes separate allergy from a cold better than anything else. Colds rarely itch.
Lying down, the lining swells more. Waking with a dry mouth and a headache often means a night of mouth breathing.
In pollen season exams and work get harder. The reason is usually disturbed sleep, not the drug — modern antihistamines make few people drowsy.
With birch pollen, apple, cherry, nut or carrot often tingle raw but not cooked. This is cross-reactivity, rarely dangerous, but worth mentioning.
That is the sign the bronchi are joining in. It belongs reported, because the cold then becomes asthma — and early treatment slows exactly that.
Anyone reacting to birch pollen often gets tingling in the mouth with apple, cherry, nut or carrot. Heated they are usually tolerated — baked apple yes, raw no. This affects about every second birch pollen allergy sufferer.
When the pollen load is already high, histamine-rich food — red wine, aged cheese, smoked fish — can worsen symptoms. Outside the season it usually plays no role.
The mild eucalyptus type, also common for children from six. As an inhalation over a bowl, not directly under the nose.
In the cold season the most widely used oil of all, diluted on chest and back. Little studied; very widespread.
Used similarly and a little milder. In babies and toddlers eucalyptus, mint and camphor do not belong near the face — they can make the breath catch.