It’s May, and the bane of many a parent and nanny has arrived – hay fever. The medical name is allergic rhinitis, suggesting an allergy that mainly affects the nose, but many people also have difficulties with their eyes, throat and even ears. 30% of children will experience hay fever and if your child has asthma, eczema or food allergies they are more likely to be hay fever prone too.
Hay fever symptoms
Most commonly:
- bouts of sneezing
- a runny and/or blocked nose
- itchy nose
- headache
- itching, swollen and or watering eyes.
Less commonly:
- itchy ears, throat and/or roof of mouth.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, hay fever can cause poor sleep, which leads to daytime tiredness and irritability.
Hay fever triggers
When we breathe in pollen it becomes trapped in the small hairs and mucus of the nose, and those who are allergic have a symptomatic reaction to the pollen particles.
Other causes of allergic rhinitis are:
- dust mites
- animal fur or hair
- mould spores.
Which means it’s important to be sure the cause is pollen, not another allergen.
Hay fever treatments
As every nanny knows, there are two very different requirements for treatment – the daytime symptoms and the nighttime ones.
First, let’s deal with the claim that local honey (honey that’s unpasteurised and produced close to your home) can help with hay fever. The best evidence comes from a small study (just 40 adults) in Malaysia, and the problem here is that to get this level of symptom relief you have to eat a LOT of honey, much more than the average parent would consider healthy for a child!
Daytime treatments
Non-drowsy antihistamines are the usual medical route. In addition you can give your child wraparound sunglasses to prevent pollen reaching their eyes, use anti-inflammatory eye-drops (although these can sting at first) and rub a little petroleum jelly around the inside of your child’s nostrils to trap pollen before it is inhaled, but be aware that this is a burn risk in sunshine. Don’t let your children play in parks or grasslands in early summer (woodlands may also be a problem if tree pollen is the allergen) and keep car windows closed when driving in the countryside.
Night-time treatments
Keep windows closed to exclude pollen from bedrooms, wash your children’s hair, face and hands when they come home and change and wash their clothes to remove pollen. Use air purifiers at night to reduce pollen in the home.
A GP may prescribe a steroid nasal spray for older children and in cases of severe hay fever, immunotherapy may be an option. This means exposing your child to small amounts of the allergen to slowly build up their tolerance, but it’s definitely a long-term solution, not a quick fix.
Girl on tractor courtesy of polesietoys at pexels.com