Tips For Dealing With Hayfever

I’m not a medical professional but I have suffered with hayfever since I was 8 years old. It probably would’ve been younger if I hadn’t lived in a desert for seven years. I thought it might be useful to provide a roundup of hints and tips that I’ve learnt over the years, some help me, some don’t. Perhaps there’ll be something on the list that you hadn’t thought about doing before. If you’ve got any other suggestions let me know and I’ll add them on.

This might be especially useful for those people who work outdoors. I have an outdoors job, am an allotmenteer, a gardener, and an ex-park ranger who was responsible for meadow surveying and management. I chose my career and hobbies well.

My hayfever typically starts in February and ends around November. I have had years where I've medicated for all 12 months with triple dose meds, but other people I know only medicate for June to August. I hate those people (I jest).

 

1.       Vaseline

Every morning, wash your face, put eye drops in, and then wipe some Vaseline around your lips, nostrils, and eyes. You don’t want loads on your eyes (it’ll stick them shut), but enough to catch any airborne dust or pollen. The idea is to trap the pollen before it gets into your face.

You could also get a clean mascara brush and apply Vaseline to your eyelashes only. It also (apparently) strengthens them, so win win.

Downside: you end up a greasy smeary mess

Upside: it works

Pro-tip: buy a huge tub of cheapo Vaseline from Poundland and use it to refill your smaller tins

 

2.       Eyedrops

Eyedrops are the best thing I use for hayfever, I use them all year round as I get dry eyes. I use Optrex for Hayfever.

 

3.       Wash your eyes

Use a clean flannel or a wad of toilet roll folded up. Soak with cold water, squeeze out the excess, tilt your head to the side, and then hold the wad to the outer edge of your eye. Gently squeeze to get a drop of water into your eye and let it run across your eye. Keep blinking. Do this a couple of times and it’ll clean your eye. And then reapply eye drops. 

Or, cup your hand, fill it with cold water, put your face down to your hand, put your eye into the water and blink blink blink blink blink.

 

4.       Wash your face

When I’m getting very hayfever-y and bunged up, washing my face helps enormously. Sometimes in the height of summer I wash my face a few times during the day. Soap, warm water, wash, pat dry, reapply eyedrops and Vaseline.

 

5.       Wash your hands

Especially if you’ve been in the garden. Pollen etc can easily get trapped under your nails, and then you rub your eyes or nose, and voila, pollen all up in that joint.

 

6.       Don’t hang things outside to dry

This one is difficult because summer is the perfect time to hang things outside to dry, especially with the cost of energy etc rising like the clappers. However – putting something damp outside in a pollen rich environment is STUPID. All of that pollen is just going to cling to your damp thing, and then dry on it, and then you get into bed with a duvet covered in pollen. I did just that last night and it’s one of those things – I need to drastically reduce my energy bill and the sun is free, but I also get awful hayfever. I know I shouldn't dry anything outdoors, but I also know that I pay the bills and well, something's gotta give.

Change your bedding and clean it every few days to remove the pollen. 

 

7.       Upgrade to silk for the summer

I haven’t read too much about it but it’s something I’ve heard a lot of – silk pillowcases can help reduce allergens and reactions. So maybe invest in silk pillowcases for the summer.

 

8.       Shower and/or wash hair daily

Wash that pollen off!

 

9.       Carry lots of tissues

I buy mine in a jumbo pack from Bodycare for 89p. Ten packs of tissues, and I have several packs in my handbag/work bag/site bag/car.

 

10.   Alcohol 

Alcohol can make hayfever worse. Drink less. You should probably drink less anyway. Click here to read more.

 

11.   Oral Pollen Allergy Syndrome 

Look it up! Or click this link here. Basically, pollen contains protein and certain fruits are similar, so when I eat an apple, my body thinks I am ingesting birch pollen and gives me a hayfever reaction. In really extreme cases this can cause anaphylaxis. Seriously, google it. For me personally, the benefit of eating an apple a day outweighs the minor reaction I have, but for some people it could mean not eating an apple ever again.

 

12.   Medicate!

But be careful and see a GP first. You can buy hayfever meds over the counter but for the stronger stuff you’ll need a prescription. Also, I think fexofenadine can now be bought over the counter but it might be cheaper to get it on prescription. I can only take certain meds due to my other medication for other things, so be aware that hayfever meds can interfere with other things. If you’re really drowsy and you take meds, consider what else you take and get medical advice.

 

13.   Hayband 

Get a hayband. I love mine. LOVE IT. Except the tan lines but that’s a different story. Mine came from eBay for about £4.99, I wear it on my elbow. It ‘works’ by using acupressure to relieve my symptoms. I have been wearing it daily since August 2021 and I haven’t taken medication since then either. I have been struggling a bit lately but then I have been out surveying meadows and grassland with work. The stopping medication is minor miracle for me as I am usually on prescription only drugs that aren’t actually tested for use against hayfever.

Get them from Amazon here

 

14.   Get your pollen filter in your car checked

Get it changed with every service!

 

15.   Drive with the windows shut

Self-explanatory, but it stops pollen coming in.

 

16.   Use recycled inside air

Switch the thingy so you don’t have external air coming in while the windows are closed. Recycle that inside air and reduce the pollen.

 

17.   Nasal spray              

Learn how to use nasal sprays properly and they can be effective. I personally don’t use them as I don’t think they make much difference for me.

 

18.   Clear your nostrils

A bowl of hot water with menthol thingies in, put a towel over your head and the bowl and inhale. Or cut some mint and hang it from the showerhead to release the minty freshness into the water and steam of the shower.

 

19.   Honey

Please don’t suggest honey as soon as someone says they have hayfever. Honey makes me INCREDIBLY ill incredibly quickly. I do not like it, it does not like me.

However, if it works for you, great! It's not something I use but my understanding is that taking a spoon of local honey before your hayfever season starts can help to reduce your allergy as you've built up some tolerance to local pollen. 

 

20.   Wear sunglasses

I have photosensitivity which means looking at the sun makes me sneeze. When I’m driving, the reactions things on my glasses don’t activate (because they don’t activate under glass as glass blocks UV), so when I drive I have to wear a pair of sunnies. This reduces or stops the sneezing, which stops my eyes shutting and stops my nose bunging up.

You could also try wearing wraparound style sunglasses to reduce pollen getting to your eyes.

 

21.   Maybe don’t work in the outdoor sector

Ha! Never going to happen. For me, being outdoors massively benefits my mental health and decreases my anxiety. Being outside is the only place where my tinnitus isn’t noticeable. I am not an indoorsy person.

 

 

I hope some of these help. I tend to use a few in conjunction for example, hayband, eyedrops, washing my face and rinsing my eyes during the day, internal air and windows shut on the car.

Happy summer!

Cottage Garden Update

I haven’t posted much of a garden update blog for a while. I tend to post all the gardeny things over on Instagram (because of course I set up an Instagram account just to document the garden. Click the link and follow me!). I have grand plans for this little patch of ground. David wants lawn, I want flowers, so we are compromising by me digging flower beds everywhere. Even if I dug more flower beds, he’d still have a huge lawn, so I’m not sure what the fuss is about – especially when he complains that the garden is hard to mow. I’m doing him a favour, right? Wrong. But anyway, I shall continue to dig flower beds until I win him over. Marriage!!

So in that vein, I have dug more beds. The first bed was put alongside the hedge between us and next door. It is 6m long and it looked huge until I stepped back. You can hardly see it because the garden is so big! It is filling out and growing well, but I might make it deeper/wider next year and put MORE THINGS in it. So far it has: hollyhock, clover, campion, sea holly, chives, fennel, ox eye daisy, verbena bon, nasturtium, lemon balm, salvia, fox and cubs, rudbeckia, hibiscus, echidna (echinacea), scabious, and the things that were already there (nettles).

I have decided that I want a bazillion more calendula, since I am now learning how to dry them so I can use them for teas, cooking, baking, and hand salves etc.  Guess what you are all getting for a certain festive holiday? Either herbs or calendula hand salve. Yay!

The second bed is the biggest, under the middle apple tree. I haven’t finished it yet as I want to extend it around the left hand side apple tree. Two semi circles around the trees connected by a rectangle bit. It’s huge and sloping and a pain to water, but I want it to be full of life and flowers and wildlifey stuff. This bed has: willow, dogwood, teasel, foxglove, comfrey, poppy, sea holly, cosmos, calendula, ox eye daisy, toadflax, chives, and loads of other things. I made my own seed mix and scattered it enthusiastically and I can’t remember what was in it, but if it works it’ll be GLORIOUS. I think it had a lot of honesty in it.

The third bed is much smaller and I wanted it to be a statement bed. Purposely put in the way so you have to stop and look at it, but also visible from the gate. I made it narrower as compromise but it nestles into the corner of the path but leaves room for mowing either side. Although I have very grand plans to get rid of all the grass around the slabs and make a herby area with camomile and creeping thyme. This bed has: cistus, echinops (globe thistle), lambs ear, verbena bon, sunflower, nicotiana, bleeding heart, borage seed, tagetes seed, and ranunculus.

The slab path was done by both of us. I had laid the slabs onto the grass to get the placement right, David went to dig them in, and then he found two huge slabs buried by 4” of grass. So the little slabs have been bedded in on sand, and then I extended the path the other way towards the fire pit.

The fire pit was fun, I dug four circles out of the lawn. Again a compromise, as I wanted three of them to be (on purpose) in the lawn so that they stood out to force people to admire them, but instead I moved them back towards the hedges, so when I get around to digging this flower bed later in the year or next year, the circles will half be in the flower bed. The tree have funeral pyre sweet pea towers in them, and the fourth (in the “middle” of the lawn *gasp*) has been lined with brown paper and filled with grit so we can stand the fire bowl on without burning the grass.

The funeral pyres were seeded before I put the bamboo canes in (harvested from the garden last year) and have got: sweet pea (direct sown), calendula, mixed wildflower, red orach, knapweed… all sorts of stuff. But again I forget and I don’t write anything down.

The two newer beds flank either side of the path that leads to the fire bowl area. At some point I am going to have arches between them, over the path, with clematis and other climbers over the arches to make a tunnel of flowers. The bigger bed has: cistus, bleeding heart, peony, sunflower, ranunculus, cosmos seed, borage seed, and tagetes seed. 

The narrower bed has sunflower, artichoke, peony, tagetes seed, borage seed, and cosmos seed. Both of these beds are also going to get chives and calendula plants, and maybe a lemon balm.

We made an above ground pond as there are too many hoops to jump through to be able to dig one, and the pond lily that has been out of the water for 4 months is growing and putting out new leaves, so I’m well pleased with that.

I have made a couple of raised planters at the side of the house, one at the base of the log store and an L-shaped bed on the other side of the path to frame the grassed area. This space is perfectly sized for my car so I need to leave it open for parking if we need the space. The bed under the log store has clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine, potato vine, ranunculus, lambs ear, and bedding plants (I don’t know what as I don’t really care for “bedding plants”). The herb bed has rosemary, sage, thyme, orange thyme, mint (in a pot), lime balm, and catmint. It isn’t fully finished yet but not far off.

The log stores are being used as my plant nursery as I don’t really have anywhere to put anything and I kept knocking the pots over when they were all on the floor. There are sunflowers, pots of cuttings, dahlias, squashes, more artichokes, and pots of mint up there.

The floor herbs by the front door are all growing really well, and I have been cutting back the lemon balm regularly to get cuttings for drying. I need a shelving unit in the kitchen for all my jars of dried stuff.

I’m very pleased with the huge thyme growing in the basket on the fence. This was a tiny plant when I first had it two years ago – I bought it in the first lockdown – and its thriving. Which I didn’t think it would since the planter is plastic lined so retains water, and thyme doesn’t like to be wet. The strawberries on the garden gate are setting fruit and I have also decided to make some new strawberry planters to put somewhere.

The wild patch at the side of the house where the bins are is growing well too. Red and white campion, heartsease pansy, the buddleia is coming into bud which will make David happy as he wants a huge buddleia, the delphinium (I think) is flowering, and the pulmonaria was all really popular with the hairy footed flower bees that nest in our wall. The blue geum thingy that I salvaged from the garden in Halesowen is loooooooooooooooovely because it isn’t pink like the rest that we have growing along the hedgerow. I might have to dig it up next year to separate it and spread it around a bit.

We have left the edges of the garden to grow long for no-mow May and now we’re/I’m leaving them long. The toads like to hide in this bit and I quite like seeing what is growing. Next year however these strips will be flower beds, so I shall have to designate a new bit for no-mow May 2023. Comfrey grows EVERYWHERE in our garden like a bladdy weed so I’ve been trying to contain that to a couple of areas as I don’t want it all over the garden.

So all in all, the garden is looking super! I am already planning my next few beds, I just need the mental energy to be bothered to dig them. My garden theme for this year is MORE IS MORE. I’m really not bothered about colour combinations or having a white border and red border and a blue border. Nah. Bung it all in together and see what happens. I’m also gardening knowing full well that in winter, everything I’m digging and planting with the exception of the three funeral pyres will be under water, so I need to try and grow things that perhaps don’t mind being under standing water for a couple of weeks at a time.

And there you have it, eight months of the garden in one fab blog post. Although we’ve been here since September but I didn’t start gardening until March at the earliest, after the flooding. So three months of gardening. Not too shabby.

Allotment Life: May 2022

What a month. I only had a few days at the allotment but going by the pictures (because I absolutely cannot remember) it was a very productive few days!

I have sown more seeds (carrot, parsnip, pea, beans, turnip, radish, spring onion), Momma P and I have mown and strimmed and strimmed and mown, we’ve listened to and seen the blue tits nesting in the box on the side of the shed (yay!), and I’ve pulled and weeded lots of bindweed and mares tail. As always.

I have direct sown my peas – I’m well late – but they are protected by some chicken wire for now to stop the birds, and when they’re big and strong enough I shall remove the wire cloche and install cane tepee jobby whatsits for them to climb up.

P

Carrot and Parsnip

The courgettes that were looking good in the polytunnel have been slugged, so I’ve got no courgette plants this year.

I’ve harvested loads of things for drying (of course I did) and dug up more teasel and thistles to bring home to plant in the garden. I also dug up and brought the weeny blueberry bush home to put in a big pot by the front door.

These two currant bushes are cuttings from a huge plant we had at one of my work sites last year. We pruned it rather harshly and took cuttings at the same time. Bunged them in a pot and they’ve taken!

I have three almonds on the tree which I’m very happy about. It was covered in blossom so maybe next year I need to tickle with a paintbrush, but I’m pleased with three as it had none last year due to transplanting it.

I have planted out four sprouts and four purple sprouting broccoli. The sprouts should be ready to harvest for christmas and the psb should be ready in February. In it for the long haul! I did say I wanted more plants that could be left to their own devices this year.

Strawbs are looking good and growing well. I need to make a strawberry planter wall at home I think.

Cake, because cake.

David came up and helped me put in a couple of tree stakes for the pear and apple trees. Work were throwing these away so they’re super chunky, far too big for the trees, but they were free.

The brassica cage has been partially made, I need to get some enviromesh to cover it now. This blue tubing was also being thrown away from work.

I picked a load of calendula to hang to dry, I don’t know what to do with dried calendula. Any suggestions?

I planted out the artichoke and borage seedlings, though writing this, I suspect I have more to plant out.

A busy little month really!!

 

Aims for the allotment from the April blog:

·       Empty and tidy shed

·       Cut back bramble

·       Sow more seed – carrot (out), parsnip (out), flowers (out), peas (out), beans (out), squash (in), sunflowers (out – am going to direct sow and see what happens).

·       Dig out blueberry into a pot and bring it home

·       Weed smaller beds

·       Pick more chard I guess

 

The chard was all pulled out and added to the compost heap as it was all starting to bolt. I did sow more seed, and next weekend I shall sow more. None of the parsnips have germinated thus far so it might be a parsnip free year, which is not what I wanted. I did dig out the blueb, I did not weed the smaller beds. Swings n roundabouts.

 

June to do list:

·       Weed small beds (heh)

·       Sow more seed – spring onion, carrot, parsnip probably, beans, peas, flowers

·       Cut back bramble by shed

·       I think I might pull the onions and garlic because that’s another huge failure for this year, so I might just cut my losses and clear the bed. I need to make this bed deeper over winter and try harder/more techniques to rid it of mares tail, creeping buttercup, and bindweed. No dig isn’t going well.