Spring is here – that means more sunlight, outside activities, yard work, TAKS, and allergies!   I’m not a doctor.  I don’t have medical training.  I’m not giving medical advice. However, let me just share some of my experiences and findings. 

I have always been a curious person.  I like to look for trends and patterns; cause/effect relationships; answers to every question that pops in my head.  I’ve noticed that my daughter and I don’t always get the sniffles during allergy season. We get headaches.  I’ve also noticed a few other things that occur in the spring, so I had to wonder about how allergens and our bodies reaction to any “threat” to its environment.

From www.nlm.nih.gov – or Medline Plus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health:

“An allergy is a reaction of your immune system to something that does not bother most other people. People who have allergies often are sensitive to more than one thing. Substances that often cause reactions are

How do you get allergies? Scientists think both genes and the environment have something to do with it. Normally, your immune system fights germs. It is your body's defense system. In most allergic reactions, however, it is responding to a false alarm.

Allergies can cause a runny nose, sneezing, itching, rashes , swelling or asthma . Symptoms vary. Although allergies can make you feel bad, they usually won't kill you.”

If our bodies are trying to fight something perceived as a foreign threat, that warfare might take all of my fighter cells from their posts in one area of my body to another.  Logically, if they are successful on the new allergy front, there might now be a weak area where they had to leave. So, that original war front starts to get more “inflamed” under attack.

I recall instances in my past where I thought that a medication was no longer working for me.  I also started to get many symptoms that indicated all types of new illnesses.  But, what if it was just that my defenses were overloaded because of allergies and my body’s successful fighting on that front?  There are indications that allergies have direct and indirect effects on the body that we normally don’t think of.

What I am getting at is that some changes you see in yourself or your child may not be a new or alarming problem. It might be that their body is trying to fight several fronts at once, and some area of the body is being breached.  Maybe if you helped the body with the fight against the allergy, it could return to its normal routine working to help other areas of your health – including emotions, behavior, mental reactions. 

Take care of your body; it is a highly complex system of very inter-related processes. Do those good things we know to boost your healthy and immunity – get plenty of sleep, eat several smaller meals throughout the day, avoid the junk foods, drink water, laugh as much as possible.  If that doesn’t help the new symptoms – THEN go to the doctor!

My best,

Tess Haranda

Personal life, career, executive coach

www.successwithtess.com