Hay Fever Hell

Back in the mists of time, when I was first began reading about and studying homeopathy my kid brother asked if I could help get rid of his hayfever. I wasn’t sure I could.

His hay fever symptoms were particularly extreme. Summer had always been torture for him since he was about seven years old. His eyes became intolerably itchy and his eyelids swelled so badly that they almost closed. He sneezed repeatedly and violently. This made his nose run like a tap and the area between his nose and his upper lip became very sore. His nose was itchy inside and so was the roof of his mouth.  

Still, despite being conscious of my incompetence I decided to give it a try. The good thing about extreme symptom is that they are easier to match to a similar medicine. Another good thing about homeopathy is that if you stick to the Law of the minimum dose you can’t do harm.This means only giving one pill, waiting to see what happens and not giving it again unless there is benefit but then later the same symptoms return.  

If you stick to only one dose an incorrectly prescribed medicine will not have any effect. That is the beauty of homeopathy, when practised correctly it follows that worthy, old Hippocratic law of medicine: “First do no harm.”  

So I sent my dear brother a packet of Sabadilla 30c containing 7 pills, with very precise instructions:   “Take one pill. Do not repeat unless there is an improvement followed by a disimprovement.”  

What I had overlooked was one other vitally important thing about my brother’s nature. He is very impatient and never reads anything before he gets stuck in! When he was little the joke was that whenever he got a new gadget he never read what he liked to call “the destructions” .Often this approach ended in tears.

My brother only managed to read my the first instruction “Take one pill” and noting there were seven in the packet he proceeded to take one each day for the entire week.   Now, my brother is generally a fairly mild mannered fellow, so I was very surprised to get a very angry phone call from him exactly one week later claiming that I was trying to kill him. He said he had never ever had such a terrible bout of hay fever and that I could stick my homeopathy where the sun never shines (or words very much to that effect!)

I managed to get him to calm down enough to tell me what he had done and then told him he was experiencing a proving. He had taken so many doses that he had actually got the symptoms from the medicine.   This frequently happens when people buy over the counter homeopathic medicines as the instructions are often completely misleading.

I have often wondered how many people are put off homeopathy because of inadvertant provings caused by totally incorrect labelling of the “take two every four hours” variety.   I reassured my brother that once he stopped taking the pills the symptoms would subside. I even said I was quite hopeful that, given time, the medicine would help his hay fever and this soothed him a little.

I am happy to report that that was almost twenty years ago, and to this day he has never had another severe attack of hay fever. After a difficult start, he is now one of homeopathy’s greatest fans and will always sing its praises to anyone who will listen! So all is well that ends well. If you suffer from hay fever and hate the side effects of antihistamines why not make an appointment with a homeopath and learn to love the summer all over again?

HAY FEVER REMEDIES

A quick computer search of 400 volumes of homeopathic medicines show that 216 different medicines have been used to treat hayfever

Of course some are used much more often than others. For best results try to match your specific symptoms to the most similar medicine description you can find.

Here are some homeopathic medicines that are the most frequently prescribed for Hayfever, many of which are in our Basic 36 kit:

Allium Cepa: Streaming eyes & nose with frequent and severe sneezing. Throat & nose feel raw. Worse in the morning and indoors

Arsenicum: Nose tickles violently. Sneezing violent and painful with watery burning discharge, making the upper lip sore.

Dulcamara: Hay-fever with a profuse, watery discharge, worse in open air.May also have thick, yellow discharge from the eyes.

Euphrasia: Eyes burn, itch and water constantly. Runny nose with much sneezing. Also available in tincture to be used as a soothing eye wash/bath.

Gelsemium: Dizzy & drowsy feeling with a blocked nose. Face hot and flushed. Weak and almost immobilised by the symptoms. Heavy eye lids.

Ipecac: Hay fever with chest symptoms, pale bluish complexion, asthmatic breathing, soreness of chest, sensation as if dust had been inhaled. Sneezing and suffocative cough, sometimes with nausea and vomiting.

Kali-bich: Worn out by sneezing and coughing. Discharge from the nose tends to be yellowish green, sticky and hard to shift.

Nat-mur: Hay fever with watery discharge from eyes and nose. Ear may become blocked with catarrh, too.

Nux-vom: Prolonged bouts of sneezing. Itching in larynx and trachea. Irritation of nose, eyes, face (over heated sensation) but generally body feels chilly.

Very bad tempered with it!

Pulsatilla: Copious thick bland or yellow coloured catarrh and sneezing. Relieved by open air.

Sabadilla: Catarrh with constant sneezing; sensation of great rawness, stuffiness & burning in the nose. Extremely sensitive to grass and flowers which instantly cause sneezing.

Wyethia: Extreme itching of the nose, palate & throat

More help:

Here is a useful search engine to help you narrow down your selection to the best possible homeopathic medicine:

http://www.abchomeopathy.com/go.php?symptoms=hayfever&Submit=Next&no=29&resuno=12&sr=&disclaimed=1

Psorinum is often given constitutionally to hayfever sufferers during the winter, to reduce their tendency to hayfever in the following spring or summer. However, for the best constitutional treatment always see a homeopath.