Understanding Pollen Count And How You Can Keep It Out Of Your House
Allergies are a devastating problem for people across the nation and they can rob you of enjoying spring and summer months. However, if you understand the concept of pollen count, you can find ways to keep it out of your home and live a life relatively-free of allergies. This does include taking allergy-relief medicines, though.
Pollen Count Definition
Pollen count is a description of how much pollen is in the air at any given time. This level is determined by a variety of private companies who provide this information to weather channels. It is gauged every day in the morning by collecting pollen from the air and determining the density under a microscope.
While this technique is imperfect (as pollen counts can vary between various stations), it helps give allergy-sufferers like you an idea of how serious your allergies might be if you step outside. Sadly, this doesn't give you an idea of the pollen count in your home, which can sky rocket if you don't take precautions.
Reducing The Pollen Count In Your Home
When the pollen count is high in your area (as reported by your local weather stations), pollen-exclusion techniques can help keep your allergies from becoming unbearable. Ways that you can exclude pollen from your home involve minimizing its existence in your yard and keeping it off of items that come into your home.
This mostly revolves around keeping your lawn and your trees trim to keep excessive pollen from getting produced. However, it also involves making sure pollen doesn't enter your home. The easiest way to avoid going outside and keeping your windows and doors closed during peak pollen times, which has been tested at being about one to two in the afternoon.
You should also clean any pollen stains off of your clothes with water and a stain remover. This helps keep pollen from spreading further in your home and keeps you and your family safe from allergies.
Treatment Methods For Symptoms
Although limiting your home's intake of pollen can help decrease the severity of your symptoms, there's no way to completely eliminate pollen infestation in your home. There are a variety of medical treatments, such as antihistamines (relieve itchy eyes and congestion) and decongestants (break apart the congestion caused by allergies).
These over-the-counter medicines are easy to buy, but may cause some side effects, such as:
- Dizziness
- Drowsiness
- Nervousness
- Irregular heart beat
To beat these symptoms, many people swear by natural remedies for allergies, such as apple cider vinegar, a saline rinse, quercetin, nettle leaf, and others.
By using these pollen-exclusion methods and treating your symptoms as they occur, you can live a life as relatively free of allergies as possible. Make sure to talk to an allergy doctor like Ear Nose & Throat Specialties PC before making any changes to your medicines or lifestyle.