Celebrating Earth Week: Carbon Dioxide and Super Pollen

[Guest guest]

Good Morning!

 

Celebrating Earth Week: Carbon Dioxide and Super Pollen

 

A recent study done at Harvard University focused on the rising

levels of greenhouse gas emissions. There study was done by growing

allergy causing ragweed, under two conditions:

 

1. current levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere

 

2. and double that amount that is believed to be in our atmosphere by

mid-century.

 

They discovered that the plants exposed to more carbon dioxide, grew

10 percent bigger but produced 60 percent more pollen.

 

It is believed that this find can account for the fact that pollen

counts are soaring!

 

Managing Your Allergies

 

Tree and Plant Pollen are one of the biggest culprits. When you come

in from the outdoors, take off your clothes and through them in the

washer. Take a shower, wash your hair and change your clothes. We

trek pollen into the house from the outdoors and this is one of the

biggest, yet unseen problems with people who suffer from allergies.

 

Antihistamines interfere with brain activity, causing drowsiness and

depression. Never use antihistamines if you have a tendency to

depression or mental dullness. Even when these drugs do not depress

mental activity, they merely suppress allergy rather than cure it. As

a result the pattern of immune over responsiveness is strengthened

rather than weakened, meaning that more treatment will be required in

the future.

 

This is even more so with steroid drugs (cortisone and related

compounds). Never use cortisone, prednisone, or other steroid drugs

to treat allergic reactions unless they are very severe or life-

threatening. If you must take these powerful hormones, limit your use

of them to two weeks. Steroids perpetuate allergy through their

suppressive action. They also lower immunity.

 

Air-conditioning your house is probably the single most important

thing you can do to alleviate pollen problems, and it can help with

two other chief inhalants—molds and dust mites.

 

Vitamin C has antihistamine activity. Vitamin C supplementation has

been reported to help people with hay fever in preliminary research.

Consider 3,000 - 6,000 mg of Vitamin C in divided doses, per day.

 

Bioflavonoids such as Quercetin, might act synergistically with

Vitamin C as both have antihistaminic activity. Although some doctors

of natural medicine advise people with hay fever to take 400 mg of

Quercetin two to three times per day, only limited preliminary

clinical research has yet suggested that Quercetin benefits people

with this condition.

 

Proteins in food can cross-react with pollen we bring in from the

outdoors. Wash all fruits and vegetables before eating them, and

don't forget to wash yourself if you just came in from the outside

when picking these fruits and vegetables. One third of allergy

sufferers may have to avoid foods such as apples, bananas, cucumbers,

peaches, pears and zucchini.

 

 

Andrew Pacholyk, MS, L.Ac

http://www.peacefulmind.com/allergies.htm

Therapies for healing

mind, body, spirit