The Natural Way to Prevent Allergies

I’m 26 years old and I can breathe easily for the first time since the dawn of time (no really, I checked).

Top it off, I stopped taking what felt like a bottle of Claritin a day to remove my allergies.

Sounds like a dream right? Waking up without headaches, not having a runny nose and breathing easily without needing to heavily medicate yourself every day.

So how did I do it? Allergy injections? Stronger medication? 6-month yoga retreat in a secluded beach resort? No, no and no. Although that last one does sound nice.

In reality, I just changed a few weekly habits, which in turn pretty much eliminated my allergy problem. First off, I started vacuuming a couple times a month, then later I just added some nourishing vitamins and changed to a healthy sweetener, and in no time my allergies were almost gone. Here is exactly what I did: 

Vacuuming Away Your Allergies

Wait, did you say vacuum? Great, I have a stuffy nose and headache, and now you’re telling me to clean my house? It is totally the last thing on earth I wanted to do to, but trust me, it makes a huge difference. 

My wife, Meg, had the same issues I did every spring and fall, but quite a bit worse than me. She had a runny nose, heavy head, and no energy for pretty much half of the year. Every night we went to bed it was the same routine, kiss each other goodnight, grab our own tissue boxes, and sniffle and blow our noses until we passed out. We couldn't figure out what was causing this, we cleaned blinds, we vacuumed, we mopped. Nothing helped.  Then we bought a new vacuum. It was night and day and seriously, this vacuum picked up 15 times more than our last one did. It was amazing the amount of crap that was in our carpets. So go buy this, now: Shark Rocket Vacuum.

But What About the Allergens Outside The Vacuum’s Reach?

I wish I had a crew of vacuum enthusiasts who went around and removed all allergens from any place I might ever need to go. Or want to go. Or may one day go to. But sadly, the Shark Rocket still has a cord, so there are some areas you and I will have to face on our own.

When my allergies started becoming manageable, I realized for the first time in my life that this is a battle I could win so I started researching every possible way to defeat the horrible allergy beast.

I tried neti pots, steam inhalation, and acupuncture (okay that’s a lie). I changed my diet, stopped going to smoky bars and even took a couple gym classes. All in all I learned a lot about what helps with allergies and even learned a bit about my own discipline in the process.

To my surprise, the things that helped the most were some of the simplest to do and easiest to maintain. It all had to do with my diet. Now, I replaced every instance of sugar, stevia, and corn syrup with natural, raw honey and took Nuun Vitamins to stop allergies before they can really take me down.

Now, we’ve all heard for ages that we should take more vitamins, so it’s no surprise that vitamins help with allergies as well. A natural allergy treatment site says that Vitamin C is a “well-known immune-boosting antioxidant that lowers histamine levels in the bloodstream,” and that “2,000 mg of vitamin C can cut histamine levels (which trigger allergy symptoms) by up to 40%, improving breathing and your airway.”

So by just adding in one tablet of Nuun Vitamins to a cup of water a day, you could be well on your way to preventing your allergy symptoms. It worked for me.

Honey Helps with Allergies?

When I first heard that honey (yeah, that tasty syrup-like topping you put on pancakes) could be a preventative for allergy reactions, I dismissed the idea pretty quickly. However, according to The International Archives of Allergy and Immunology, raw honey can have an effect on allergies, as in this study where:

“patients reported a 60% lower total symptom score (p < 0.01), twice as many asymptomatic days (p < 0.01), and 70% fewer days with severe symptoms (p < 0.001), and they used 50% less antihistamines (p < 0.001) compared to the control group.”

Or in layman's terms, the patients who consumed honey had 60% fewer symptoms, twice as many days with zero symptoms, 70% fewer days with serious symptoms and took 50% fewer antihistamines. It’s amazing what the natural food has in store for benefits of humans!

Why Does Honey Help With Allergies?

Raw, local honey has little bits of bee pollen, propolis, and beeswax inside the honey.

These are actually microscopic elements that you can’t really see or taste, but offer amazing health benefits when you consume them. You see, people have allergies to specific plants, grasses and more because they’ve been overexposed to them at some point in their life. Then when their bodies see too many foreign invaders (allergens like pollen or dust), their bodies start to make histamines to attack and remove those foreign elements, even though they aren’t actually harmful.

This is the reason antihistamines work to reduce allergy symptoms for many people. Because antihistamines medicines contain little molecules that tell your body to stop making histamines. Then when your body isn’t making histamines to fight the pollen and dust you’ve breathed in (or any other non-harmful allergen), you stop having allergy symptoms. However, as soon as the antihistamine has left your body, your allergies start right back up again, since those medicines only affect the symptom and aren’t the cure to the problem.

And that’s where pure honey helps allergies. By consuming a small amount of honey most days, you’re giving yourself a little vaccine of sorts that shows your body that this pollen (or other allergens) are okay to be in the body.

Where Can I Get Some Allergy-Preventing Honey?

First things first. You need to make sure it is raw, unprocessed, pure honey. Why? Because many honey brands today pasteurize their honey and add in sugar, sweeteners and artificial flavors so they can make more profit from their honey products.

These companies do this for the same reason big soda companies use corn syrup instead of real cane sugar. It’s a lot cheaper to grow corn and make corn syrup than it is to grow and process real sugar, despite being unhealthy and worse for the consumer. When they pasteurize (or cook) their honey, they’re destroying what’s inside the honey, meaning you’re not getting your daily vaccine from the honey. And if the company adds in a bunch of sugar, water, artificial flavors, etc. - then what little pollen and natural remedies are inside the honey get diluted and don’t help you at all.

It’s a joke since honey is already a naturally sweet dish that never goes bad. So, why would you need to add sugar, preservatives, pesticides or anything else to such a wonderfully healthy, natural treat?

Now, the shameless plug. I used to buy honey from Trader Joe’s all the time, they have some unique honey and who doesn’t love shopping at Trader Joe’s. Rango Honey reached out to me and asked me to directly compare their honey to the honey at Trader Joe’s.

Hands down, without even competition, Rango Honey, specifically, their Mesquite honey won the tests on every single level. The unique Sonoran flavors pop out and their honey didn’t have that faint plastic taste that Trader Joe’s honey had. Now, my favorite honey is the Pure, Raw Orange Blossom Honey . It’s pure, raw, unfiltered honey that is delicious. It fills all the requirements for helping with allergies and has, by far, my favorite taste.

Naturally Stop Allergies

So if you’re looking to lessen or completely reduce your allergies, then you should vacuum your house a couple times a month (or more if you have dogs) with a Shark Rocket Vacuum, start taking Nuun Vitamins, and sweeten your life a bit with Rango Honey’s amazing Orange Blossom Honey.

If you follow my exact approach for eliminating allergies, then you’ll be allergy free (is that even possible) without needing to have an expensive acupuncture session or twelve trips to the doctor.