Every winter, cedar feverish desperados scavenge doctor offices and drug stores for over the counter drugs and prescriptions. All they want to know is how can they stop their agony short of fleeing the Hill Country? Changing how we manage ourselves and manage our lands will decrease our cedar fever suffering. Here are a few approaches you can discuss with your doctor to help reduce your cedar fever anguish: Alleviate Alleviating means making your symptoms more manageable. To start, reduce your sugar consumption from November through February. This will be difficult for most since those are the holiday, sweets-focused months. This approach works because cedar fever is a regular pollen allergy + colds and flus. When you decrease sugar, you decrease your cold and flu misery, resulting in decreased cedar fever symptoms. If you're looking for a quick approach, drink special juice blends that target hay fever allergies. For example: 1 cucumber, 1 apple, 1/2 bunch of parsley, the juice from two lemons, fresh mint, and a knob of ginger. Juiceland makes a juice called Go-J that helps reduce those symptoms. It is packed with vitamin C, papaya, mango, peach, orange, goji and lemon. Another approach a product called Easy Breather by Herbalogic in Austin. This solution contains herbs such as astragalus root and mint leaves to open your passageways and pamper your nasal passages. Another option uses the leaves of the Mountain Cedar. This treatment supports the old saying that remedies can be found near that which caused the ailment. Besides containing camphor, Mountain Cedar leaves also contain vitamin C.1 Steep a handful of leaves from a female Mountain Cedars (since they do not produce pollen). Then inhale the steam to open your sinuses and soothe itchy eyes.
Avoid: When cedar fever season was recognized in the 1920s doctors told patients to go to the Gulf Coast to avoid cedar fever. This alternative became so popular not just with cedar fever, but with all hay fevers, that several hotels along the coast began advertising as hay fever retreats. If you can’t leave the Hill Country, then stay indoors and use HEPA air filters when the pollen is smoking. If you have to go outside, shower immediately when you return and put your clothes in the laundry. Better yet, plan your outdoor activities on days after rains, when humidity is high and winds are low. When you do venture outdoors, consider wearing a mask. Since Mountain Cedar pollen grains are especially tiny at 19-22 microns, this means you need a mask to filter out particles up to 15 microns in diameter. A N-95 mask would more than suffice. If you don’t want to wear a mask, then you’ll need to flush the inside of your nose before you go to bed using a neti pot. Pour water in one nostril and it comes out the other using gravity. A modern, less awkward, alternative to the neti pot is nasal saline irrigation. This process uses more force than gravity to flush your sinuses. *Important: whichever device you choose, it is important, according to the Food and Drug Administration, to ONLY use boiled or distilled water to avoid introducing nasty microbes that could harm your brain.
Adapt: Adapting to the pollen provides the longest and best results. This approach has traditionally been made with allergy shots prescribed by your doctor. An alternative to shots is allergy drops, such as Allergena Zone 5.3 The concept of shots and drops is based on Dr. Samuel Hahnemann's early 1800s definition of homeopathy as a concept that ‘like cures like’. Both allergy shots and drops teach the body to adapt to the pollen during cedar fever season to no longer be viewed as such a threat. Options that teach your body to adapt to the pollen by becoming less reactive include acupuncture. Another less known technique, developed by Victor Frank in the 1970s, is called Total Body Modification (TBM).4 Chiropractors use it to teach your body to stop reacting to the pollen. The effects last a few weeks and should be repeated two to three times each cedar fever season. Another way to adapt is to remove chlorines and chloramines contained in city water. These chemicals will irritate your lungs when inhaled when taking a hot shower. A low-cost way to do this is to add a filter to your shower head if your city uses chlorine or a vitamin C neutralizer if your city uses chloramine (such as Austin). To achieve the best results you need to improve your gut health. An unhealthy gut can get tiny holes that allow things like cedar pollen to enter your bloodstream (called leaky guy). Nobody wants that. Foods, such as processed sugars, indirectly cause these holes since they feed the bad gut microbes. To find out if you have a leaky gut that’s making your cedar ever symptoms worse, the best route would be to contact a gastroenterologist with training in nutrition.8
Disclaimer: This information is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.