Living Healthy Highlight: The Bloom

May 17, 2018

It’s that time of year! We spoke about it extensively in our previous blog, “Living Healthy Highlight: Allergy Season is Almost Here!”, and the time has come. Allergies are in full-force here in Minnesota, and we’re ready to take them on, armed with our essential oils!

More important than simply using allergy medication or essential oils to curb your allergy symptoms, knowing why you have allergies and why you have a reaction to certain allergens can help you to select the perfect treatment regimen. There are a myriad of allergens you might be susceptible to in the Spring and Summer months, and it’s important to know which of them are affecting you. Another thing to remember is that over-the-counter and prescribed allergy treatments are often Antihistamines which can be good and bad at the same time.

Antihistamines don’t stop the allergens from affecting your body, they prevent the histamines that are produced in your body from doing their job. Their job is to increase the secretion of mucus and other bodily fluids and responses to expel the allergens from your body, so taking allergy medication will definitely slow down your runny nose or itchy eyes and inflamed sinuses, which is definitely good! What’s bad is that you’re not actually increasing the power of your immune system. In fact, you’re effectively shutting it off, which is never good. So there’s a trade-off for treating your seasonal allergy symptoms. Or, maybe you don’t need to go down that road at all.

The beauty of using specific (emphasis on specific) essential oils to combat the symptoms of your allergies is that they don’t actually act as antihistamines. Instead, they continue to let your histamines do their jobs, but you can use those essential oils to increase the formidability of your immune system while also impeding the overreaction to allergens. So, while you might have some inflammation in your nose that’s making you uncomfortable and your nose runny, you don’t want the function behind those symptoms to go away, you would appreciate if they were less intense. That is where the essential oils come in. They can work to increase immune system function to improve your first line of defense against allergens, but they can also reduce things like inflammation and bacteria that also trigger these immune responses. It’s quite amazing, actually.

Now that you’ve got a bit broader understanding of how allergens and allergy treatments can work, your next step will be to determine which essential oil regimen you should try. Interestingly, there are many essential oils that are wonderful allergy remedies, many of which we covered in our previous allergies blog. Oils like Peppermint, Lavender, Tea Tree, Frankincense, and Eucalyptus can all be a great place to start your regimen. Head over to our previous blog to see what steps you can take to use these oils properly!