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A Nasal Douche Also Helps With Hay Fever
Hay fever
Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen. You will have hay fever symptoms soon after pollen comes into contact with your mouth, nose, eyes and throat.
Pollen is a fine powder that comes from plants. The most common sources of pollen are trees, grass and weeds.
Hay fever is also called seasonal allergic rhinitis.
Hay fever symptoms are usually worse between late March and September. The pollen count is at its highest when the weather is warm, humid and windy.
You can have symptoms for weeks or months, or sometimes all year round.
Hay fever symptoms
Symptoms of hay fever include:
- sneezing and coughing
- a runny or blocked nose
- itchy, red or watery eyes
- itchy throat, mouth, nose and ears
- loss of smell
- pain around your temples and forehead
- headache
- earache
- feeling tired
Hay fever symptoms in children
Hay fever symptoms in children are the same as in adults.
Hay fever usually begins in children between ages 2 and 5. If your child is under 2 and is showing similar symptoms, it may not be hay fever.
With children, sometimes it can be hard to tell if they’ve got hay fever or a common cold.
There are some ways to spot the difference.
How you know it’s hay fever
If your child has hay fever they will not usually have a high temperature or a sore throat.
But they will have:
- symptoms for at least 6 to 8 weeks – a cold will last 1 to 3 weeks
- symptoms at the same time every year (pollen season)
- itchy eyes and nose
Hay fever symptoms ease for some children as they get older. For others, symptoms will disappear altogether.
Reference – Hay Fever – HSE.
Many patients associate the use of a nasal douche with cold symptoms or use it for chronic sinusitis . B ut did you know that a nasal douche can also be effective against hay fever? In this blog we explain exactly how that works.
- What is nasal irrigation?
- Hay fever symptoms
- Nasal irrigation for hay fever
- How does nasal irrigation help with hearing fever?
- How Nasal Rinse Salt Works
- Scientific research
- Experiences with nasal irrigation
- FAQ
What is nasal irrigation?
Nasal irrigation is a simple method of rinsing your nose and upper sinuses with a saline solution. This helps to remove mucus build-up, allergens such as pollen, and other irritants from your nose. It is often performed with a nasal douche, such as the Nasofree nasal douche, which is specially designed to perform this cleaning in a comfortable and effective way.
The nasal douche is often used for a blocked nose due to a cold. Patients often experience that they have much more breathing space. But a nasal douche can also be an effective remedy for hay fever complaints. Research has been done on this.
Hay fever symptoms
When you suffer from hay fever, pollen from grasses and trees settles on your nasal mucosa when you inhale it. In someone who is allergic, such as hay fever or house dust mite allergy, this causes inflammatory reactions in the nasal mucosa, which leads to the typical symptoms of a respiratory allergy.
The most common hay fever symptoms are:
- Itchy nose
- Sneezing
- Stuffy nose
- Runny nose
- Watery eyes
- Permanent feeling of a cold
Often these symptoms lead to headaches, poorer sleep and therefore to loss of concentration and fatigue. It is nice if you can prevent these complaints. For example, by rinsing your nose.
Nasal irrigation for hay fever
People with hay fever can benefit from nasal irrigation with nasal saline. At Hibernia Medical we offer the Nasofree Nasal Irrigation .
ENT specialists and allergists indicate that nasal irrigation is of added value in the treatment of allergies. It is effective, simple and safe.
With the water that you rinse through your nose, you rinse away the pollen inhaled through the nose to a large extent, which reduces the typical hay fever symptoms. For this, it is important that you use the right rinse salt. For hay fever symptoms, you use nasal rinse salt just like for cold symptoms.
In the next paragraph we will explain further why nasal irrigation helps with hay fever and then why the use of nasal irrigation salt is important.
How does nasal irrigation help with hay fever?
Hay fever, also known as allergic rhinitis, is caused by a hypersensitivity to pollen. When these pollens come into contact with your nasal mucosa, this can lead to inflammatory reactions that cause the well-known symptoms: itching, stuffy nose, sneezing, and watery eyes.
Using the Nasofree nasal douche helps in several ways:
- Remove allergens : Rinsing your nose regularly removes pollen and other allergens that remain in your nasal passages. This reduces the chance of an inflammatory response and helps control your symptoms.
- Reduce and prevent inflammation : By rinsing the nasal mucosa, a nasal douche can help reduce inflammation. This relieves symptoms such as a stuffy nose, sneezing and itching. It also reduces the chance of infections in the nose, and can help existing infections to heal faster. This is important during a ‘hay fever attack’, when you are more vulnerable to colds and sinus infections.
How Nasal Rinse Salt Works
Do not rinse your nose with water or water with kitchen salt. Rinsing your nose with tap water is painful and leads to irritation of the sensitive nasal mucosa. This is because water in the body is slightly salty.
You would think that adding table salt to the water would help. But table salt consists only of sodium chloride and often contains iodine. Both substances irritate the nasal mucosa. Rinsing salt that consists of both sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate is more effective and milder.
Doctors recommend an isotonic saline solution/physiological saline solution of 0.9% (9 grams per liter. This is the same salt/water ratio as is present in your body.
