Allergies can be imprisoning. They can make it impossible to go for a walk in the country, and even make it difficult to go outside. Some allergy sufferers can't visit their friends who have pets, and many others can't eat their favorite foods.

Even the pleasures and benefits of exercise are difficult because some allergy sufferers' noses run more than they do. A runny or stuffy nose leads to mouth breathing, then a dry mouth, then less efficient breathing, and then less efficient overall functioning. A domino effect is set up, and the allergy sufferer is knocked down.

Conventional medical treatment for allergies usually consists of antihistamines, steroids, and desensitization shots. In obstinate cases, laser surgery may be utilized to vaporize mucus-forming nasal tissue. People with allergies know that these treatments don't work; at best, they provide temporary relief of symptoms, and at worst, they create side effects which can be worse than the allergies themselves.

Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding about allergies is the assumption that the allergen (the cat dander, the pollen, the housedust mite, or whatever) is the problem. Actually, the allergen is simply the trigger, while the allergic person's body is the loaded gun. Rather than just treating symptoms or avoiding the allergen, the best course is to take action to strengthen the body's own immune and defense system. Natural therapies which do this help empty the loaded gun or simply make it shoot blanks.

Homeopathy and Allergies
In the near future when homeopathic medicines are widely accepted by the majority of orthodox physicians, doctors will pretend that they have always been supporters of homeopathy and homeopathic principles. They will point to conventional allergy treatment as an example of this.

While it is partially true that conventional medical treatment of allergy uses small doses of a substance to which the person is actually allergic and even though this principle is the basis of homeopathy, homeopaths use considerably smaller doses than conventional allergy shots. Also, homeopaths find that using the same substance to which the person is allergic may relieve a person's symptoms, but it will not truly or deeply cure the person's allergy.

Homeopaths instead prescribe a "constitutional medicine," a remedy that is individually chosen to the totality of symptoms that the person is experiencing, not just the allergy symptoms. Finding a person's constitutional medicine requires the care of professional homeopath.

People can, however, use homeopathic medicines to treat the acute phase of their allergy. Although these natural medicines will not "cure" one's allergy, they will often provide effective relief and will do so without side effects.

Solid research have proven the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines in hayfever. Dr. David Taylor-Reilly, a professor and homeopath at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, published an important study in the Lancet (October 18, 1986) which showed that homeopathically prepared doses of 12 common flowers were very effective in reducing hayfever symptoms when compared with patients given a placebo.