Allergy Relief through Yoga

Itchiness, difficulty breathing, uncontrollable sneezing. Allergy symptoms take away from our quality of life. For many of us, this year has been a safe haven from seasonal allergy symptoms. The usual barrage of tree and grass pollen has been reduced by cold weather and sporadic summer rains, leaving our sinuses and lungs feeling better.

We’ve been lucky at the usual peak of pollen this year, but the season is only half over. Plant species release pollen at different times of the year, with pollen counts usually highest in late spring or early summer. In the Pacific northwest, tree pollen starts in early spring or even late winter, and grass pollen enters the air in May or June. To prolong the fun, many weeds and grasses start releasing pollen as late as August and don’t stop until the fall rains hit. Despite our apparent relief, there will be a time when allergies strike again.

Forest (and tree pollen) at Brown Preserve, Rich Kalman

So when pollen hits, how do you handle your symptoms? The most common choices are to take medication and stay indoors, but these treatments have their downsides. Medication comes with a price tag and a set of side effects, and staying inside has limits to its effectiveness. There’s another more holistic method to understand and address your allergies.

The first thing to know is that an allergic reaction is an immune response to a substance that our body perceives to be a threat. The body releases histamines and other chemicals to attack the threat, which in this case, is harmless dust or pollen. Our own immune system is what causes inflammation, itchiness, and bring us discomfort. Medications, like antihistamines, counteract our unnecessary immune response.

Second is that stress plays an important role when it comes to our immune system’s ability to function. Chronic stress has been shown to have a detrimental effect on our immune systems, and this has consequences for our wellbeing as well as our immune response to allergens.

Unfortunately for us in western cultures, we experience chronic stress without even knowing it. We spend a lot of time sitting, and we spend a lot of time feeling stressed about our personal or work lives. It’s easy to have bad posture, chronically tight muscles, and shallow breathing as a result of of chronic sitting and stress. Bad posture and tight muscles can reduce our overall lung capacity over time.

The connection to allergies is that chronic stress and a reduction in lung capacity actually increase the severity of allergy symptoms.

Reflection off Goldsborough Creek at Hilburn Preserve, Mike Leigh

Yoga provides a pathway for us to heal ourselves and reduce the wear on our immune systems. The practice of yoga encourages depth and power in our breathing, strengthens our muscles and posture, and most importantly, helps us deal with the stress in our lives. Medical studies have not proven that yoga will stop your allergies, and there certainly isn’t a pose that will cure your itchy eyes and runny nose. Don’t throw away the inhaler just yet!

What yoga does is give us a way to strengthen our response to the inevitable assault of stress, pollen, and everything else. It is a preventative form of care, not an acute treatment. Instead of counteracting the effects of the immune system with medication, we can actually improve our bodies’ immune response to allergens by taking care of our stress and learning to breathe deeply.

To start a yoga practice, visit a studio near you, or find a place at home to try some of these poses that may help with allergies. Before going outside to practice yoga, check the air quality and allergy indexes. If you’re wondering what next year’s pollen season might look like, you may be surprised to learn that changes in climate are affecting seasonal allergies.