Have you developed a new hay fever or sinus sensitivity as issues with stress in your life have increased?
Do you have your suspicions that burnout, adrenal fatigue and hay fever seem to have some sort of correlation, but you’re just not really sure what that is?
This cycle of itchy and pulsating sinuses, constant sneezing, watery eyes, brain fog, feeling wheezy, fatigue on top of fatigue (is that possible!!!), can be exhausting and debilitating, and can cause even more stress on the body.
It can be a vicious cycle!
While hayfever symptoms can obviously be caused by external factors such as pollens, dust, toxic cleaning products, foods or a whole long list of other potential allergens, I believe that your potential sensitivity to these things is because of what is going on internally.
It is the upset of your internal chemistry that is causing a reaction in your system.
Stress, especially extreme stress (and issues with adrenal fatigue) most often create gut issues. Gut issues can commonly cause issues with eczema, allergy or hay fever symptoms.
Hay fever was something I experienced for nearly 3 years and it was one of the most debilitating knock on symptoms of adrenal fatigue that I dealt with. I had in previous years only occasionally experienced hay fever and it would come and go pretty quickly.
Dealing with adrenal fatigue turned hayfever into a chronic issue for me, and I had fatigue upon fatigue as I was sent into a state of exhaustion on many, many occasions trying to deal with this “alarm response” in my system that was regularly going off.
I came to understand a few things
- the role of histamine in the body plays an important part in all of this. Many adrenal fatigue sufferers end up with high histamine levels as the hormonal imbalances in their body are not able to keep their histamine levels balanced.
- one of the reasons that hay fever was such an issue for me was because of the imbalance in my cortisol levels.
- the imbalance in this histamine, was not only contributing to hay fever issues, but also increasing the progression of adrenal fatigue and had me dealing with other additional issues such as food sensitivity and anxiety (common issues with adrenal fatigue).
Dr Michael Lam (one of the pioneers in treating adrenal fatigue) has a very informative article on his website over at www.drlam.com on Histamine and Adrenal Fatigue. In this article he explains that
Most sufferers of Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS), especially those in advanced stages, invariably are overloaded with histamine internally without sufficient cortisol to counter its effect. Many are in a generalized inflammatory state with many nonspecific but bothersome symptoms of discomfort.
He also went on to say that
Due to intrinsic high histamine levels within, the threshold for external allergens to trigger inflammation is reduced, especially from pollen and grass during the spring. Most sufferers of Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS) will find themselves highly sensitive to such external allergens in addition to heat intolerance when outdoors.
I checked all these boxes 🙁
So, 3 years on and after dealing with regular moderate and severe hay fever symptoms, I have finally been able to find some relief and my symptoms have been reduced to mild or non-existent, and I would love to share with you some of my revelations!!
3 Things You Need to Know to Get Relief from Hay Fever Symptoms
1) You Need to Deeply Calm Your System Every Day
There are many different tools that you can use to do this, but I wanted to mention one here which I have recently experienced a wonderful result with. This is known as Tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and you can check out more information about it over at The Tapping Solution.
It involves you tapping on various meridian points on the body. What I have found when I do it, is that there is a very deep shift in how I feel. After tapping for only a few minutes, I feel a very deep sense of relaxation.
Nick Ortner in his book The Tapping Solution, explains that “what tapping does is halt the fight-or-flight response and reprogram the brain and body to act – and react – differently”. Really take this in, this is huge!! Because being in the stress response way to often is what leads to burnout and adrenal fatigue!!!
Nick also mentioned a really interesting study undertaken by researcher Dawson Church, PhD who studied changes in cortisol levels and psychological symptoms in 83 people.
There were 3 groups:
- one group did an hour long EFT tapping session,
- a second group had an hour of talk therapy
- a third group had no treatment at all.
The results showed a 24% to 50% lowering of cortisol levels in those who did the EFT tapping session (INCREDIBLE, IN MY OPINION)
and no change (apart from normal daily fluctutations) in the talk therapy group and no treatment group.
WOW, is all I can say.
My personal result with this is that since I have been tapping my hayfever symptoms have gone from moderate to severe, down to mild but mostly non-existent, and I am over the moon about it!!! 🙂
I honestly don’t know the intricacies of how these meridian points avert the stress response, but I just know it works and I am experiencing it first hand.
I encourage you to try it for yourself and see how you feel.
Go to www.thetappingsolution.com or check out Nick Ortner’s book, The Tapping Solution.
2) Address Underlying Emotional Issues
Ok, I’m just going to package this up in a nutshell. Issues with stress create a knock on effect with histamine (as explained by Dr Lam above) and resultant issues with hay fever is one of the effects. Taking anti-histamines is not going to be a long-term solution, it will simply suppress what is going on and only provide very short term relief.
What you need to do is go right back to the beginning here, and address what is creating the stress in your life. This is a huge topic for conversation, but for right now just open to this possibility. You may choose to do this through the help of a counsellor, through tapping or eft (as mentioned in no.1), by writing, but ideally by really getting into the old subconscious patterns that are driving your behaviour.
Louise Hay in her book You Can Heal Your Life explains that hay fever issues are related to “inner tears”. It can also be irritation with another person. So, consider what unexpressed emotions you may have inside of you about other people.
I feel it is my job to open you up to a new way of thinking about why you may be suffering with stress, adrenal fatigue and burnout, and to get beyond looking at the band-aid fixes as long-term solutions.
3) Address Your Diet
The physical aspect is also hugely essential if you are deep in the throws of hay fever symptoms. Food sensitivity issues will likely be a problem in combination with the hay fever, so it is essential to be as kind to your gut as you can to help bring your body back into balance.
It is essential to greatly reduce the sugar in your diet as this will often set off or aggravate symptoms. And there are very likely to be other irritants such as wheat, gluten, dairy, white flour and caffeine. I know it can seem like there’s not much left, but there really is, real whole foods, and what can be better than that on your system, wherever you are at with your health.
Take note of the order in which I have presented these solutions. Often we are wanting to quickly look at what we can do to get immediate relief for the symptoms, but in reality we need to look deeper at what the root causes are to get sustainable relief.
Stay open and willing to new ways to bring your body, mind and soul back into balance, and let that ……………. atchoo …………….. bless you ………………… be a thing of the past.
You can do this.
Love and best wishes.
Lisa.
