This or every winter, you may feel like you have cotton stuffed up your nose, head, face, or even in your ears. Allergies and winter allergies especially are no fun.
You may even get annoying chest congestion, that starts when you wake up and then once you get going, annoyingly disrupts an otherwise good day.
This article is all about what you can do to have a better winter season, facing winter allergies. Read all 11 tips, as they’re all golden to keep you fit and healthy.
Dryness aggravates allergies, so here are some simple moisture tips:
1. Invest in a small humidifier for every room or place you spend time in.
If you’re a Vata, then dryness is something you face regularly, literally on your face (or scalp), and probably on your cracking hands and sandpaper feet. Winter only aggravates dryness. You need a daily winterizing self-care regimen.
You may find yourself wanting to moisturize your rougher face more often. Or do glycolic exfoliation, and facial mask pampering. I have my favorites, but this article is about allergies, so I’ll try to stay on topic 😊
Keeping your body moist with non-fancy products such as Eucerin lotion and pure aloe (clear or Kermit frog green), will help. Every little tidbit helps to keep you calm and your winter allergies, tame.
When I was growing up, humidifiers were these relatively expensive, bulky, and loud machines that took up floor space. And if you’re a decorator, there was no way to dress up the eyesore.
Nowadays you can buy a sleek, inexpensive humidifier at your favorite variety or everything stores like Marshall’s or Home Goods. Table humidifiers are usually less than $20 and if cleaned regularly, you can use them year after year. Many table humidifiers have glowing neon changing color lights that you can turn on for fun and add cool brightness to your day… we all need that!
You can complement a running humidifier with a Vicks Vapor Rub, that contains camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus. I like that it can open up your nasal passages and wake up a Kapha imbalance if you gently sniff. As the name implies, it’s meant to be rubbed on your skin, and so can help chest congestion
For winter allergies/chest congestion:
2. Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) steaming before you shower. You can do this over a pot on the stove. This is the best thing for chest congestion (coughing up mucus), or if you feel a heaviness to your chest that seems to come on when the weather starts to cool.
Take apple cider vinegar and boil/steam with a water mixture. Inhale and exhale through your mouth so you can deliver directly to your chest. Add more water in the beginning as the vinegar can have a stinging feeling. Then you know that you’re doing something good.
I recommend doing this before you take a shower, as the apple cider vinegar has a strong odor, that can linger on you and your clothes, and be repulsive to a sensitive Vata.
Thankfully it’s easily washed off by taking a shower. If you are highly congested, performing this practice once or twice per day is good. You want to nip it in the bud, so your chest congestion goes away after a few days. It may come back, but then you may only have to perform weekly or bi-weekly. The longer you let it go on, the longer it stays.
I don’t use the good ACV for steaming, as it will be wasted in evaporation. If you only have the expensive or organic ACV, with the mother (the good milky stuff) that’s good for ingestion, just don’t shake up the ACV bottle, and let the mother stay on the bottom.
Keep doing the other ACV tips and neti pot regimens recommended for fall allergies and ragweed allergies.
For winter allergies/nasal congestion:
3. Horseradish, wasabi, and spicy mustard can help clear your sinuses. You could use foods such as freshly, ground horseradish that’s not acidic. Wasabi pea snacks are another good idea. They can wake you up with their spicy potency! Your eyes don’t have to tear up, you just want that tingling (sometimes stinging) feeling in your nose. You can sometimes feel pressure heat in your cheeks that for some, can turn rosy.
4. Put just a dab of Vaseline all around just the inside tip and edges of your nose. A little dab of Vas will do you. If there are allergens in the air, Vaseline can be a barrier from the small particles entering your body. You can resort to this when you still feel a stuffy nose even if there’s moisture or precipitation outside (that’s usually an indication it’s not an outdoor tree or plant allergy causing your symptoms).
I especially like the cute, pocket-size rosy lips Vaseline version because it has a rose scent that’s good for a Pitta imbalance.
5. Take a black pepper tin and wave it around your nose. Force a sneeze as that’s good for clearing and cleansing your nose from allergen buildup, (as coughing is good for clearing your chest). I may have mentioned this one before, but it’s just so practical and does the trick!
…Who says it has to be sophisticated or difficult to work?
For winter allergies/headaches:
6. Drink a full glass of water. Sometimes that’s all you need. In America, we reach for the medicine cabinet too easily and pop aspirin like it’s candy.
7. V-8 vegetable juice. Growing up, V-8 was advertised as a meal replacement and then branded as the hangover cure.
If you need energy and have a brain frontal lobe mind funk that’s common with a sinus headache, V8 tomato juice can help.
8. Peppermint tea. Cold weather can aggravate headaches that peppermint tea can help with. Peppermint is good for all aches so you can have peppermint sea salts around that are good for a bath.
To calm your nerves all day and de-stress your headaches:
9. Use a candle warmer to warm your warm beverages (tea, coffee, or cocoa).
Candle warmers are perfect for that purpose and while you’re working! I bought a $5 candle warmer from a Bed Bath & Beyond type store and have used it for years. They’re the perfect, safe heaters you can walk away from unintended.
They will keep your beverage warm the entire day so you don’t have to keep nuking in the microwave, that can be a time waster especially if it’s not close to you. Sometimes you just want a nice ‘lil sip a few hours later.
You can also set a mood in the room with your tea. Celestial Seasonings Fruit Tea Sampler is a good way to keep you enthusiastic after lunch. The variety gives you a choice of whatever your fruit fancy is, whether it’s sweet, tart, or light (blueberry, cherry, wild berry, or peach).
Warming tea can be the new candle scent on the candle warmer! You can keep it on your desk instead of a regular coaster.
10. Celestial Seasonings tea offers nice year-round teas like the peppermint tea I mentioned, that’s good for all aches.
Or seasonal tea spice blends and holiday teas that are fun such as Gingerbread Spice, Nutcracker Sweet, or Candy Cane Lane. You’d think you were a kid again, entering Candy Land (without the sugar and calories).
You’ll save some money if you buy the Celestial Seasonings tea, which are bagged teas not individually packaged. There are 20 bags in a box that costs in the $3 range. If you do the math, that is about 15 cents per tea bag compared to the fancy brand teas that cost close to a dollar or more a bag.
For a modern Ayurveda person, you can also enjoy their Jammin’ Lemon Ginger or Ginger and Probiotics tea (ginger, cinnamon, licorice, cardamom, hawthorn, turmeric, star anise, black pepper), that can get your stomach going in the morning.
Winter Allergies Herbal Remedies
This may come as a surprise to you, but my favorite store is not the candle store (although I could gladly sniff all the scented candles in the store without a second ask)… but, my favorite place to shop is the vitamin stores.
Herbs may seem like wives’ tales in our modern medicine world of cures, but you know your own body. They are best used for prevention.
If a health problem starts in your body, it can become chronic, so it’s best to avoid it even if you’re not sure if you just dodged a bullet. For annoying inflammation, as a metaphor… you want a one-time annual flower bloom that dies, not a perennial that repeats every year.
Overseas in Europe or Africa, you’ll find herbs in pharmacies that are considered cures, and more than just preventative supplements. In America, an herbal supplement is usually an afterthought and hasn’t caught on like wildfire, like yoga finally has.
In my allergy prevention shopping cart, you’ll find:
10. Goldenseal: best taken for a week at a time when you start and has saved me from one too many sinus infections. This has replaced antibiotics for prevention that the doctor prescribes even when they don’t know if you have a viral or bacterial infection. Antibiotics will only help if it’s bacterial.
11. Nasal spray with grapefruit seed extract: that’s safe and good for clearing allergens in your nasal passage. With a homeopathic and anti-inflammatory nasal spray added to your daily routine, you can prevent allergy-related inflammations that can happen above and below your neck. Pump several times in the morning and throughout the day as needed and instructed on the bottle.
Next time you’re in the herbal grocery aisle or vitamin store, you’ll hear me whispering in your ear and reminding you what to look for. Ohhh… and don’t forget the apple cider vinegar!