How To Fight Off Spring Allergies

If you suffer from allergies during the spring months, you cannot completely protect yourself from exposure to pollen. However, you can take steps to greatly reduce your exposure to pollen and thus greatly reduce the severity of your allergy symptoms. Here are a few steps you can take to make this spring more bearable. 

Plan Your Outdoor Activities After Noon

If possible, try to avoid participating or spending a lot of time outdoors early in the morning. Early in the morning is when the pollen counts are generally the highest during the day. If you have outside activities you need to do, plan them for the late afternoon or evening time. As the day goes on, pollen counts tend to decrease. Lower pollen counts will make it easier for you to be outside with your allergies.

Protect Your Face When Your Outside

When you are outside, protect your face from pollen. Your allergy symptoms are aggravated when pollen gets into your nose, mouth, eyes and ears. Put on sunglasses to protect your eyes from pollen. Wear a wide brimmed hat to protect your face from pollen. 

When You Come Inside, Wash Your Face & Hands

When you come in from the outside, the first thing you should do is wash both your hands and your face. Pollen is so small, you will not see it on your hands and face. By washing your hands, you can stop yourself from transferring pollen to your eyes and mouth when you touch your face. By washing your face, you remove any pollen that got on it when you went outside.

Try to do this every time you come in from outside, even if you only walked from your office building to your car and then from your car into your home. Even in a short period of time you can get pollen on your skin. You should also wipe off your sunglasses as well; pollen can get on the lens when you were outside.

Take A Shower Before Bed

Even if you are more of a morning shower person, during spring allergy season you should take a quick shower before you go to bed or when you come inside and know you will not be going back outside for the day. Pollen likes to stick to your body and especially to your hair, so make sure that you wash your hair as well as your entire body.

You should also change your clothes. Do not relax around your house in the evening in the same clothes you wore during the day outside. Those clothes could have pollen on them that you transfer to everything you sit on. 

Don't Forget To Bathe Your Pets

If you have pets, make sure that you stay on top of giving them baths on a regular basis during the spring time. Every time your pets go outside, they carry back pollen, mold spores and dirt into your home through their feet and fur. In order to reduce your allergy symptoms, you need to make sure you give your pets at least weekly baths during the height of spring allergy season. 

You should also wipe off their feet and wipe off their fur with a towel when they come in from outside to reduce the amount of pollen they bring inside of your home.

You cannot eliminate spring allergies; however, you can control the severity of them by taking steps to limit your exposure to pollen this spring. Contact an Asthma and Allergy Clinic for more information.