Quick Note: I’m sharing this based on my personal experience and research, but I’m not a medical professional. This post is for informational purposes only and isn’t medical advice. You can find my full medical disclaimer at the bottom of this page.
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So it happened again. You were going along, minding your own business, when out of the blue, your nasal allergies flared up. Next thing you know, you’re pouring drainage out of your nose, down your throat, sneezing, eyes watering; the whole nine yards. What do you do? It’s too late for anything more preventative. All you can do is straight up damage control. But what does damage control look like? Before we can establish what damage control looks like, we first have to consider, the damage. Now, I don’t know about you, but my allergy attack damage frequently encompasses a particular collection of fallout symptoms.
Just yesterday I had taken a couple of my kids to the dentist office. I walked in the door feeling pretty baseline. Less than a minute later, my nose started itching, then draining. Before I knew it, I started sneezing and my eyes started itching. By the time I got out of there I felt like I had been about run over and left for dead. Itchy eyes, my nose felt raw inside and out, my lips were dried out and painful. I had gunk pouring down my throat. My tongue felt kind of swollen and I could feel the inflammation kicking in in my face and my throat. On top of all of that, I had a headache, my face and chest had a rash and I felt exhausted. Those are the kind of fallout symptoms that I am talking about damage control for in this post.
- Activated Charcoal – The first line of damage control. When the antihistamines aren’t enough to get the job done on their own, it’s time to go next level. As best as I can understand activated charcoal works by grabbing onto some of the allergen related ‘junk’ that makes it into your digestive system. Like when I started pouring nasal drainage, some of it went down the back of my throat, dumping allergens and histamine into the stomach. The activated charcoal works on binding to anything ‘toxic’ it can reach, including some allergens and histamine, as well as other chemicals and molecules generated by the allergic response.
- Follow Post Allergen Exposure Regime protocol– I covered this protocol in the post, HEAD TO TOE: POST ALLERGEN EXPOSURE REGIME. This protocol covers getting as much of the allergen expose off of you and out of you as you can. This includes things like showering and putting on fresh clothes and scrubbing the inside of your mouth with a toothbrush.
Up to this point, the damage control has been about getting the allergens off of your body as well as out of it. That in and of itself is really the first step to recovering from an exposure. The next step is starting to slow the ‘state of emergency’ inside the body. When we get hit with a big allergic exposure our body goes into a ‘state of emergency’. It starts splitting mast cells and dumping histamine. Your cortisol and adrenaline levels shoot up in an effort to keep you moving and get you to a ‘safe’ place. Now that you are in a ‘safe’ place, it’s time to make sure your body understands that the crisis is over and it can begin to calm down and begin repairing the damage. This next section is the next step towards calming down that internal fire of reaction. - Nasal Sprays– My immediate go to here would be NasalCrom. NasalCrom helps prevent the mast cells from continuing to split apart and dump histamine in the nasal passages. Another option would be using Nasacort, which is a steroid, to begin working on reducing the inflammation in the nasal passages. Using both for an extreme reaction is by far the best option. However, don’t take them together. Use one and then wait about 30 minutes before using the other. Just to give your body some time to absorb the first one. You don’t want to just rinse it back out.
- Hydrate– At this point, odds are pretty good that your body has grabbed a hold of a bunch of your internal fluid and redirected them into some kind of inflammatory process. Or straight up turned the fluid into nasal drainage that’s now sitting at the bottom of your trash can. Water is your best bet for rehydrating. Ice water is even better because it also helps bring down that internal heat that is keeping you in a state of fight or flight.
- Grab a snack– After all of that junk draining into your stomach, you might be feeling a it sick to your stomach. I know that happens to me quite often. To offset that and encourage your body to realize that the immediate crisis is over, a small snack containing protein and fat helps things to settle down a bit.
- Take a break if you can– My body doesn’t really give me much of a break about this one to tell you the truth. Allergy attacks just suck the life and energy right out of me and it doesn’t take long before I just want to lay down and cry, I’m so exhausted. One thing that I have noticed is that when I am taking that break time it does really seem to help my body to relax and calm down enough to realize that the biggest part of the crisis is over.
The allergens have been removed. You’re clean, you’ve run intervention to try and get your body to calm down, but the damage has been done. Your poor little nose is raw. Your throat aches. Your upper lip is dry and sore. What can you do to speed up the healing process? I will tell you what has helped me. - Triple Antibiotic– Personally I take a little bit of triple antibiotic and using a cotton swab, I carefully, gently, coat the inside of my nasal passages. The triple antibiotic creates moisture barrier that allows the inner lining of the nose to begin to heal. It also helps protect it from drying out too much and cracking, as well as reducing the likelihood of a secondary bacterial infection in the lower passages.
- Petroleum Jelly– Use the petroleum jelly to create a protective coating on the lips, skin above the lips and the outside of the nose where it is chaffed. The jelly will create a barrier that will help keep the skin from drying out any further and help it to heal quicker.
- Whiskey– The whiskey is for the throat pain and discomfort. Now before some of you get too excited about this step, or outraged, let me clarify. I am really just talking about like a teaspoon here. Maybe two. My personal preference for this is fireball, but I don’t think it’s the brand or flavor that actually makes the difference. (Granted, the cinnamon in it does have anti microbial properties, so maybe it does make a difference.) The whiskey (or other high percentage alcohol) does three things. One, whiskey has a higher concentration of alcohol that temporarily reduces the sensitivity of the nerves in the throat which reduces the feeling of pain. I’ve noticed that to make this the most effective the alcohol needs to slowly trickle down the throat, not just get swallowed.Two, the whiskey acts like a bit of an antiseptic, hopefully clearing and killing some of the surface bacteria that might be there that might otherwise take advantage of a raw irritated throat. And three, the alcohol causes the small blood vessels in the throat to expand and increase the blood flow to the area. By increasing the blood flow it brings the the body’s cleanup crew to the scene quicker than would otherwise happen; again speeding up the healing process.
- Benadryl Soak-For a swollen tongue, try pouring some liquid Benadryl in your mouth and letting it just soak your tongue for a couple of minutes. If you are sensitive to the effects of Benadryl and don’t want to swallow it, just spit it out after it has a chance to soak in. I’ve tried this a couple of times and it has helped reduce the overall swelling in my tongue.
Unfortunately all of these things together are still not enough to prevent fallout, but hopefully together they can reduce the severity and duration of symptoms. I know that they have made a difference in the intensity and duration of the symptoms that I experience.
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Photo created by Mel Seeley in collaboration with Google Gemini
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