May 29, 2019
In this Q&A session, Dr. Michele Burklund, Puriya’s Chief Science Officer, talks about Seasonal Allergies.
The questions for this session include…
- What causes seasonal allergies?
- What are some natural remedies to help with seasonal allergies to be used with the Breathe-Ease Balm?
- What are some lifestyle changes to reduce seasonal allergies?
- What are some of the ingredients in the Breathe-Ease Balm?
- Can my headache be caused from nasal congestion?
- How often can I apply the Breathe-Ease Balm?
If you want your questions to be included in our future FB live sessions write a comment below. We would love to hear from you!
Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter for more health tips! Click here to sign up:
https://www.puriya.com/pages/sign-up
Right below, you will find the transcript of this video.
Transcript:
(00:04) – Hi everyone, Dr. Michele Burklund here. I wanted to answer some more questions and to make sure that my audio was on, because I’m not sure if all of you guys could hear me on the last one. So, thank you for joining me today. I am the chief science officer here at Puriya, and a lot of what I do is the medical literature, the educational material, and I’m here with you once a week to answer all of your questions. And so, this week we are talking on a very fittingly subject right now, seasonal allergies. So if anybody is catching this live, feel free to write where you are coming in from in the comments below. Or if you yourself might suffer from seasonal allergies or what your symptoms are as well. So we’re gonna be talking about seasonal allergies and one of our products, the Breathe-Ease Balm, which helps a lot with sinus congestion and headaches. So I want to remind everyone to sign up for our newsletter to get amazing information on health, great tips, great information, what’s going on here at Puriya and also future interviews as well.
(01:16) – Now, okay, so, it’s a gorgeous time of year, it’s beautiful outside, there’s so many different colors going on, but what comes with that? And that is a lot of pollen in the air. So did you know that 58 million Americans suffer from allergies each year? And interestingly, one in five people in America have a pollen allergy. So there’s a variety of different symptoms that can come with that, from a runny nose, watery eyes, coughing, sneezing, sinus pressure. All of those things are very typical to seasonal allergies. And I thought this was a great first question to what causes these mild allergies? Well, it’s actually a response of your own immune system, and it identifies the substance, so let’s use pollen, as a harmful foreign invader. So what happens when your body identifies the substance as an invader? Well, it goes into action and produces antibodies to combat that harmful substance. So then each time your body encounters this substance or encounters pollen, those antibodies tell your immune system to release chemicals like histamine into your bloodstream.
(02:34) – So once histamine is into your bloodstream, it causes all of those annoying symptoms like headaches, itchy eyes, swelling, and nasal congestion. So, interestingly too, last week I did an interview with David Kennet on Sound Healing, and if all of you are suffering from seasonal allergies, I would also advise you to watch this interview, because he discusses very unique ways on how to reprogram your immune system to fight seasonal allergies and to re-balance, so it doesn’t react the same way as well. So catch that. Moving on to the next question, what are some natural remedies to help with seasonal allergies and to be used along with our Breathe-Ease Balm? So, for those of you who don’t know what our Breathe-Ease Balm is, it helps with nasal congestion, it’s a group of ingredients, which contains a lot of concentrated great essential oils. So when you use that topically for symptoms, we can do a lot of great things internally with food and herbs as well.
(03:42) – Vitamin C, let’s not forget about this, this is like a foundational vitamin which is great for seasonal allergies. It reduces histamine levels, and most of you know, it’s found in fruits and vegetables. You can think of things like oranges, peppers, papaya, kale, even brussels sprouts actually has it. So, it’s great to start increasing your vitamin C levels during that time. Nettle is a good one. So, researchers believe that nettle’s mechanism is to reduce the histamine levels in the body in the response to an allergen. So, don’t run out to the forest and start picking a whole bunch of fresh nettle, because that will not help, that will actually cause your body to react to the stinging nettle, that’s why it gets its name. But you can use nettle, either in a dried form or in a capsule form, and a tincture of these different things, it does not have its stinging power anymore, and so, it can be very helpful for your allergies. Also quercetin, it’s able to kind of calm your immune system, it’s been shown to prevent the release of histamine.
(04:50) – Interestingly, a Japanese study of 20 people with pollen allergies found that quercetin supplements reduced eye irritation and itching. So what is quercetin exactly? It’s an antioxidant. It can be found in many different foods like blueberries, elderberries onions, capers, cranberries, and green tea. We also have some great herbs that can help with seasonal allergies as well, like goldenseal is effective for sinus disorders, has a lot of great antiviral properties and immune properties. There’s another herb called eyebright. It’s an excellent remedy for mucus membrane problems due to its inflammatory and astringent properties. And also in our last Q&A session we talked a lot about histamine producing foods and mucus producing foods. So, I would advise you to go back and listen to that, because there’s a lot of foods that you wouldn’t normally think can actually contribute to the release of histamines. But if you are suffering from seasonal allergies, it could be quite helpful to not only integrate more vitamin C and these herbs, but to also reduce foods that can create more histamine in your body and also more mucus with foods like dairy as well.
(06:10) – So another question I love as a naturopathic doctor is, what are some lifestyle changes to reduce seasonal allergies? And there are so many simple and very effective things we can do. One thing I’ve always told my patients when they have seasonal allergies is to wash your pillow more often, like wash your pillowcase two to three times a week. Because during the day, especially during spring and summer when it’s very high pollen, you know, a lot of things can collect on your pillow, and then you go to bed at night. So it’s changing that, rotating your pillow, and cleaning the pillow case can be quite helpful. Another very powerful, very simple thing is taking your shoes off at the door of your home. So, not bringing in all of those potential allergens into your home, but leaving everything at the door can help stop the spread when you are inside. Also, washing your face each night before you go to bed to help remove allergens before you sleep. And then, to help with nasal congestion, taking a shower, turning the fan off in the shower and really increasing the humidity can help clear your nasal passages as well, and humidifiers, which help add moisture can be very soothing to the nasal passages.
(07:32) – So, in the Breathe-Ease Balm, I’m not going to go into deep detail about the ingredients, because we talked about that last time. It’s not that many ingredients that we have, but the combination of mechanisms of action and the concentrations are incredibly powerful. So we have peppermint oil, lavender oil, eucalyptus oil, tea tree oil, and then beeswax, and olive oil. So all of these have specifically been shown to help fight different antimicrobials and also clear the sinuses and help with nasal congestion in different ways. So I wanted to talk about one study, a study performed in Australia analysed the antiinflammatory effects of tea tree oil and found it to help with swelling related to hypersensitivity. So hypersensitivity is a reaction that can occur in seasonal allergies, as well as modulate different inflammatory pathways. So, not only can it actually help getting to the core of the seasonal allergy issue, but it modulates the inflammation to help reduce it as well. So I thought that was very interesting with tea tree oil.
(08:49) – And of course we have it, it’s a primary constituent in our Breathe-Ease Balm, and it’s very effective. It’s also probably one of the most studied essential oils out there for all of those different properties, from anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial as well. Okay, moving on, the next question is, can my headache be caused from nasal congestion? Yes, definitely. So headaches can be tricky, they can be from a variety of causes, vascular origin, pressure-related origin, muscular, neurogenic. But if you have nasal congestion and that’s a new symptom, most likely your headache is caused from that. Because the sinuses swell up with histamine, and it causes inflammation, and that can cause pain in your sinuses and also headaches. So, I would say, yes, absolutely it can be a cause of a headache from nasal congestion. Another great question is, how often can I apply the Breathe-Ease Balm? And if you have seen any of my previous Q&A sessions, you would know that I’m going to say every single person is individual, and it’s based on an as needed situation that depends on how much nasal congestion you have, if it’s really inhibiting your ability to breathe, all of those different factors on how much you need to use it.
(10:19) – Now, I will recommend not putting the Breathe-Ease Balm into your nose where your sensitive mucus membranes are, because that can cause more irritation. But if you put it on your chest, or if you put it right under your nose, that can be very helpful. Now, I will always say to patch test an area to see if you could be having any type of irritation or something. Test a little area first, because you never quite know, no matter how great we are at putting together these formulations, each person is different, and each person is always sensitive to different things as well. So I also wanted to remind you that here at Puriya, we like to celebrate individuality, and we have a 180-day money back guarantee, no questions asked. So if it did not work for you in any way, we want you to find something that works for you and your skin and does not have any irritations.
(11:19) – So, we also want to honor that and to support you on your healing journey as well. So we talked a lot about different, very simple, but highly effective ways to help with seasonal allergies from reducing histamine foods, which you can find more in our previous Q&A session, to adding great botanicals, using metal, increasing your vitamin C, increasing different fruit intake, like blueberries and your quercetin levels as well, washing your pillow cases more often, taking your shoes off at the door, washing your face at night, all these things can help reduce your seasonal allergies while you are using the Breath-Ease Balm.
(12:06) – So I will let all of you guys go and enjoy your Friday and your weekend. But first I wanted to remind all of you that we have an amazing interview coming up at this Monday with Dr. Michelle Sexton, who has been researching medical uses for cannabis for over a decade. So in this interview, you will understand more of the uses for medical cannabis, you will learn more about Dr. Sexton’s research that she has been doing for over a decade in medical cannabis. And for those of you who might have heard this, but don’t quite understand what it is, we will be talking about the endocannabinoid system and how it affects your body. So, a lot of great topics, and finally, we will talk with Dr. Sexton about how she uses medical cannabis in her own practice. So that’ll be Monday at 2:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, May 27. And if you sign up for our newsletter, you will also get that reminder. So you can catch us live and let us know where you are watching from and if you have any comments. So, I will see you next week for our Q&A session and be sure to catch that interview on Monday as well. Have an amazing weekend.