According to weather forecasts (and my long-suffering eyes and nose) 22nd June is the day of the year with the highest level of grass pollen floating around, making life for hayfever sufferers truly miserable. Here are some useless tips I have received and tried over the years that have been of little or no relief - feel free to add your own...
-Close windows at home and in the car
All very well but isolation is hardly a long-term solution. What about in between car-home-office? or the weekends? Maybe it's just worth locking us all up until the summer is over, house arrest (remember to feed us a couple of times a week, please!). That will definitely eliminate the sneezing, itching, puffy-eyes, headache problem... or even better, maybe we should get under work arrest and work 24/7 from May til August: no outdoors allowed. That would actually increase Ireland's productivity and help us get out of the recession as well... This is certainly worth taking into consideration... I wonder why I didn't think of it and submitted it to the Your Country, Your Call competition...
-Wear sunglasses
Check. Maybe they meant gogles? plus people will think you are a tosser if you wear sunglasses at night...
-Wear a mask
Tried that a while back. It wasn't particularly practical, since my nose was running most of the day. Unless they patent a special mask with a drainage system in place it is highly unlikely will make it as a main hayfever relief method. Other downsides: you could get mistaken for a loopy Michael Jackson fan or a swine flu freak.
-Eat local honey all year around
This must be my fifth year on the 'local honey' diet and either: A- it hasn't affected my suffering in the slightlest or B-I would have been much worse if I hadn't taken it. In any case, it is difficult to assess results so we'll add it to the category of tasty tips, while not very clear effects.
-Don't dry your clothes outdoors
Not much of an option here, I'm afraid.
-Drugs
having tried many, I can't really say they solve my problem, although I'm sure other cases will be sorted with some anti-histamine. I keep taking them in the hope one day they'll will...
so this leaves us with one option:
-stop breathing altogether, which is not very practical at all either, for obvious reasons...
However, some website http://www.hayfever.ie/ is claiming since the main problem is reducing the amount of pollen we ingest, hayfever symptoms will be reduced by reducing breathing...
I rest my case
1. Who was Saint Valentine? Saint Valentine, a revered figure worldwide as
the patron Saint of love, had his relics housed in the Whitefriar Street
Church ...
drying your clothes between the hours of 10am and 3pm might be another option. The pollen is at it's worst in the morning and evening so this would mean they would collect less pollen at these hours.
ReplyDeleteAnd if they did collect more pollen, you could always wash them again......hang on....that sounds almost as helpful as don't go out when the pollen count is high.
Best thing to do is use HayMax pollen barrier balms (www.haymax.biz), Qu-chi acupressure bands (www.quchi.co.uk) or Butterbur (www.petadolex.eu) or all three together.
Thanks so much for that Max! I presume it's working for you... someone suggested acupuncture but I haven't tried (yet).
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