As many people enjoy the warm summer days by staying out in the sunshine for as long as possible, for others it can mean locking yourself indoors to avoid the dreaded hay fever.
The mere thought of sitting in a garden or park can bring some hay fever sufferers out in a sneezing fit. While there are plenty of medicines out there that claim to help reduce its effects, it seems there’s yet to be a complete cure.
As well as the usual antihistamine tablets, nasal sprays, eye drops and everything in between, every year there are new claims that someone has found a home remedy that cures them completely of hay fever.
So as summer begins to rear its head once again, so too do the interesting home remedies for hay fever.
Goran Pavlovic took to Facebook to explain his own treatment – which basically involves stinging yourself with nettles once a week. He claims, since he started doing it three years ago, he’s not felt the effects of hay fever at all.
Goran wrote:
All my life I suffered from hay fever. I pretty much chocked [sic] to death every summer. Then, few years ago, an old man (crazy old man according to my wife) told me to try nettles.
Basically, as soon as the spring starts, he told me, and the first nettles sprout out, pick a bunch and sting myself with them. Do that once a week until the end of autumn. Apparently this would make my immune system concentrate on nettles and forget about the pollen.
To my wife’s horror and the amusement of the fellow walkers in parks and forests, I soon started the “therapy”. This is my hand in the nettles bush :) And lo and behold it worked… I haven’t had any problems with pollen for 3 years now…
So there you have it. Just wanted to share with you my experience. Just in case someone is interested in use of herbs for medicinal purposes…
And as the law requires, here is the disclaimer: don’t do this at home
While it may sound alternative at best, there is some science behind the nettle theory. Being stung by nettles is thought to reduce the amount of histamine in the body caused by allergies, as Cambridgeshire Live reports.
Ingestion of nettles can reduce hay fever symptoms as they are full of iron, Vitamin C and calcium, which works as a ‘pick me up’ for when you’re feeling run down.
Perhaps some nettle tea might be better than actually stinging yourself though.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.