It is a wonderful thing to see the end of winter and the beginning of spring. The budding trees and the blooming flowers can be wonderful for the emotions after a long gray winter. Unfortunately many have mixed feelings about the coming of spring because its arrival means that allergy season is now in full swing.

Many people suffer from an allergic reaction of some kind or another when spring hits. Allergic reactions happen because your immune system over responds to all of the new material in the air. As the pollen and mold spores begin to fly, people’s noses get stuffed up and throats get sore. There are even those that break out in skin rashes that can make the entire spring season quite unbearable.

The symptoms of springtime allergies can be:

-Skin rash or hives
-stuffy nose, sneezing
-coughing, difficulty breathing
-red, watery eyes

There are some things that you can do to lessen your springtime allergies. A good first line of defense is to try and stay inside for a while until your body begins to build up its defenses:

• try to work out inside; if you are a jogger, and you suffer from springtime allergies, it is always a good idea to do some indoor jogging until your body has had time to adjust to the springtime conditions. Breathing hard while you’re outdoors will make it much easier for pollens, dry grass, mold spores, etc. to enter your nasal passage.
• Avoid any kind of yard work; just like above you don’t want to be outside until your body has time to adjust and it is therefore imperative that you don’t go outside with a rake and start disturbing the ground and creating more debris that will cause you great pain eventually.
• Keep your windows closed; this might seem like the wrong thing to do at the beginning of spring when you want to start letting fresh air back into your house but it is always a good idea to keep your windows closed for the first few weeks of spring so that again you have time to adjust.
• Use a dryer; in the spring people start to hang their clothing out to dry again but this is something that you should avoid if you have allergies. Your clothing can pick up the pollen and other debris while it is hanging outside and will further exacerbate your allergies when you put this clothing on.
• When you do go outside, make sure that you take a warm shower soon after you have come indoors. A nice warm shower will wash away any spores or pollen that you might have picked up on yourself, especially in your hair, while you were outside. Blow your nose and wash it out really well with the water and this will help to relieve any sneezing or sniffling. When you come inside, also make sure that you change the clothing that you were wearing outside, that way you are safe from anything that your clothes might have picked up out there.

* If you do get some kind of rash on your skin from poison ivy or poison oak for example, you might want to:
try making a thick paste of baking soda and water. Use this paste to cover any of your itchy areas and it should help greatly in soothing any itch that you might have. This is a wonderful cooling paste that reduces itch that makes the springtime rashes at least bearable.
* If you are suffering from sneezing, watery eyes and a stuffed up or drippy nose, try this old remedy:
mix a tablespoon of horseradish with a little bit of honey, take this a couple of times a day. Both of these ingredients will help to kill any bacteria and the horseradish will break up the mucus and will open up your sinuses.

By implementing some of the ideas above and by trying the natural cures mentioned, you can greatly reduce the discomfort that you might feel during the spring allergy season.